Lori Rabanes was born and raised on Maui, but said she may have to move her household of 17 elsewhere because her landlord is trying to evict her.
Amid Maui’s housing crisis, she can’t find another home to rent.
“We’re good people, we pay on time. I just need one roof over my head. And that's all, it's all I need,” she said. “That's all my family needs is a roof over our head. And I don't know if I'm gonna get that, you know, after March 5, because my landlord, she's waiting.”
The governor’s ninth emergency proclamation on wildfires, which includes a moratorium on evictions, is currently in effect until March 5.
The landlord of Rabanes' Kahului rental, where she and her family have lived for five years, has been trying to evict her for the past six months. Despite months of searching, Rabanes hasn’t been able to find any options.
She was told by multiple realtors that they would only rent to fire victims.
“Don't try to apply,” she said they told her. “Because you're wasting your money on us. We're not going to rent to you. You need to be a Lahaina victim.”
“I get what Lahaina went through,” Rabanes added. “And I feel for them because my husband works in Lahaina.”
He lost his job after the fires and went on unemployment. But they haven’t been able to get any government housing assistance and Rabanes said she’s left feeling like a victim herself.
"I’m scared that I'm going to be homeless," she said.
They have also tried searching for smaller houses and separating their large family, with no luck.
Along with her children, grandchildren and husband living with her, Rabanes has two foster kids. She said she can’t let her family be homeless.
“I'm afraid, you know, it's already traumatizing to the two boys [who are] now 16, 17,” she said. “And they gotta go through that again. I see the worry in them — they've already been through so much. Me as a foster parent going to put them right back in that situation, I can’t let them go through that. That’s just not fair for them.”
Rabanes is one of many Maui residents who say they are facing evictions right now. She said she sought help from the Maui Tenants and Workers Association to stand up for her rights as a renter.
Alan Lloyd is an organizer of the association.
“So because the eviction moratorium by the governor has loopholes, which there's four of them, we have people getting evicted,” Lloyd said.
“And so the loopholes are, if I'm selling my house, I can evict my tenant. If I’m renovating my house, I can evict my tenant. If I move in my immediate family member, I can evict my tenant. If my lease with my tenant runs out, I can evict my tenant.”
He said many landlords are using the loopholes to evict their tenants but turning around to get more rental money through FEMA’s direct lease program for fire victims.
FEMA announced it will reject properties that illegally force tenants out to gain higher rents from the program. The agency said it is accepting reports alleging unlawful evictions to be investigated by state and federal authorities.
But Lloyd said many tenants fear retaliation if they report their landlords, so many go unreported.
In the meantime, he’s lobbying for the eviction moratorium’s loopholes to be closed. He’s also urging Maui County to require landlords to sign for their reason for eviction under penalty of perjury, which he believes would help deter them from turning around to accept FEMA money.
The association runs an evictions hotline to help educate renters on their rights at 808-444-1119.
Though many renters say they can’t prove their landlords are evicting them in favor of FEMA’s funding, Zoltan Balogh’s landlord came out and told him just that.
“There I was, with a text saying they would be signing a lease later that day, to put in someone who had lost their house in the fires, and that they would be starting Jan. 7,” Balogh said. “So if you do the short math on that, it's nine days of notice.”
Balogh got a lawyer and ensured he was given his right of 45 days' notice before moving out.
Lloyd said the root of the problem, which he explained as a massive shortage of long-term rental inventory, has a simple solution.
“The solution is, you make all short-term rentals be permitted. And you stop permitting new short-term rentals,” he said. “There are 26,000 short-term rentals on Maui. That's plenty of short-term rentals that can be used for long-term rentals.”
The governor’s office said it’s likely that the emergency proclamation will be extended past March 5.
The Department of the Attorney General is looking into complaints of possible violations to the emergency proclamation.
Dave Day with the attorney general’s office said they have received 15 complaints so far concerning evictions for FEMA funding. He encourages anyone wanting to report a violation to email hawaiiag@hawaii.gov.
