WAILUKU, Hawaii — The Lahaina home that Tamara Akiona shared with ten people was never quiet, and that’s how she liked it.
Akiona, her husband, uncle, stepdaughter and her best friend’s family filled the house once owned by her grandparents, with four bedrooms, two living rooms and a spacious backyard.
She remembers the happy anticipation of hearing the front door open and not knowing who would come home. There was always someone cooking in the kitchen. Neighbors gathered in the evening to chat and share food from their gardens. Children chased the man with shave ice as he drove by in his truck.
“Those are the things I miss,” says Akiona (51). “We just don’t have that anymore.”
The house was one of 1,898 residential buildings that burned during the August 2023 Maui fires, which killed at least 102 people and displaced 12,000. Now Akiona and her husband live in a two-bedroom apartment in Wailuki, 40 minutes from Lahaina. When they moved, she insisted that her uncle, Ron Sambrano, come with them.
“It’s like ‘Lilo and Stitch,’” Akiona said, referring to the Disney film about family bonds. “No one is left behind.”
It is estimated that as many as a third of the people displaced by the Maui fires ended up in the homes of friends and family in the weeks following the disaster. It was a natural solution on an island already struggling with a housing crisis and where values such as generosity and family are deeply rooted. But increasing the size of a household all at once can be stressful and expensive.
The Akionas and similar families received support from a unique disaster relief program. For a year, the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement’s Host Housing Support Program gave people who took in displaced loved ones benefits of $500 per person, up to $2,000, per month.
Disaster relief workers and advocates say it’s a powerful example of how support can be shaped around survivors’ cultural values and preferences while easing demand for temporary housing and keeping families and communities intact.
“Every time we see a megafire, we see mass displacement, and the most common displacement we see is people then doubling or tripling down with family members and friends, sometimes even for a few years,” said Jennifer Gray Thompson, CEO of the disaster. advocacy organization After The Fire. “But what they never get is real money to do it.”
In the immediate aftermath of the fires, the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement (CNHA) quickly learned how many displaced people were staying with friends and family—avoiding the hotels where 8,000 people were temporarily housed, because they couldn’t find affordable rent, or because they gave up just prefer.
“That’s very normal in Hawaii, where you lean on your friends and family,” said Kuhio Lewis, CEO of the 23-year-old Oahu-based nonprofit. “That’s just part of the fabric of Hawaii. It’s this aloha spirit that is unique to us.”
CNHA recognized that these informal housing facilities would be essential to keep families housed and decided to make them part of the overall disaster response. In October 2023, it launched a small pilot program where households paid $375 per person for six months. Both the host and guest have gone through a vetting process, including interviews and a personal home inspection.
With donations from the Hawaii Community Foundation and the American Red Cross, CNHA increased the payment to $500 per person and extended the program to 12 months. The $2.5 million effort supported 672 displaced people in 253 households.
The money allowed the Akionas to pay for the HOA fee and gas for the new apartment to commute back to Lahaina. It provided a boost when Tamara’s work managing a holiday home slowed down and Kawehi, 50, took a second job as a valet at a hotel but fell and broke his knee.
Through their own stability, the Akionas were also able to help Tamara’s uncle Ron Sambrano.
Sambrano, 60, saw the neighborhood burn down in August. For months afterward, he would pull his hat over his eyes whenever he had to drive through Lahaina.
“It was a special place, in less than 24 hours everything was wiped out,” he said. “So it’s quite traumatic.”
Living with his niece and nephew has been a comfort. “They do their best to help me and make sure everything works,” he said. “It’s a blessing. Without them I could be on the street.”
While it is common for disaster survivors to receive financial assistance to stay in hotel rooms or temporary rental housing, paying hosts to host loved ones had not yet been attempted in the United States. This can aid the entire recovery, says Gray Thompson of After The Fire.
“It has a lot of benefits that people might not understand at first glance,” she said. Placing people in already occupied homes could take the pressure off the tight housing market as hundreds or thousands of households seek shelter. It can prevent children from having to change schools and puts money back into the local economy by helping families buy groceries and other needs.
Perhaps most importantly, host programs can keep families and communities as intact as possible. In the year following the fire, it is estimated that more than 1,500 Lahaina families left Maui due to a lack of housing and employment opportunities.
“We need people to stay home in Hawaii,” Lewis said. All of CNHA’s housing initiatives since the fires—paying hosts, renting to families, paying rent, and even building temporary housing—are aimed at preventing further erosion of the community.
Helping people stay with their loved ones also had unexpected benefits. Of the 6,000 households CNHA has helped since the fires, it found that households in the host program went through their FEMA and Small Business Administration applications months faster than the others.
“The program’s greatest strength was giving survivors the time and opportunity to heal comfortably while pursuing the more challenging aspects of disaster recovery,” said Skye Kolealani Razon-Olds, director of resilience for the Maui programs of CNHA.
Although the first program of its kind ended in November, Maui is not the only community still struggling with mass displacement due to natural disaster. In North Carolina, 10,000 households were placed in hotel rooms after Hurricane Helene, and half of those are still there.
When asked whether the program could be replicated in other communities, an American Red Cross spokesperson said the group will “apply the successes and lessons learned for potential use in future responses.”
CNHA is entering the next phase of helping people rebuild and return to Lahaina. It partnered with Maui Architects to offer free and reduced design plans and is giving nearly 200 families grants of up to $15,000 to cover pre-construction costs such as permit fees.
The Akionas ultimately want to rebuild their home. They are waiting for a major investigation. The water in their street has not yet been restored. Because construction costs are so expensive, they may wait until they can afford to build a home they want to grow old in.
Most of their eleven-person household has now moved to Wailuku or Kihei, a twenty-minute drive away. “For the most part, we feel like we have our family unit,” she said. “We are now as close as we can be.”
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