A Federal Emergency Management Agency modular home site in Lahaina called Kilohana will be ready to house residents next Friday. That’s according to FEMA Regional Administrator Bob Fenton.
“All infrastructure is in at the site. The roads are in, sidewalks,” he said. “What they're doing now is placing the actual housing units in each location and connecting them to utilities.”
Fenton said about 50 units are in place, and the project total of 167 units will be completed sometime in January.
Priority at Kilohana will be given to displaced families still living in hotels.
“We're going to start off with those that are still in our direct sheltering, meaning that they're in some type of hoteling unit, and we haven't been able to place them in direct lease into a condo complex, and so that will be the first group, and we have a little bit over 30 different families or households in that category,” Fenton said.
The Kilohana homes will have one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom options. It’s a joint project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that prepared the site and installed infrastructure.
FEMA is also working with owners of 175 second homes who don’t plan to rebuild in the near future to lease their land and build tiny homes for residents. That’s in addition to 13 units planned on resident properties for them to live in while they rebuild.
Fenton said the goal is to move families back into West Maui who may have had to relocate.
FEMA’s temporary housing assistance program has been extended for an extra year until February 2026. But starting February 2025, those across all FEMA housing, including the Kilohana site, must start paying rent.
“We will be working with them to start discussing the rental process,” Fenton said. “Everyone — the 1,200-plus households — are getting notices from us right now about the need to provide rent. We will obviously look at their financial situation and assessing that it never goes past 100% of fair market rental rate. And what we can do is adjust it downward.”
Fenton said that amount will not exceed 30% of a family’s income.
Fair market rent is set by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. But Lahaina residents are pushing back, saying those rates aren’t enough to cover Maui’s high rental costs.
Fire survivors at recent community meetings requested FEMA consider an emergency recalculation for Maui.
“We will continue to tell you that calculation is flawed because it’s not a fair market on this island,” said Lahaina homeowner Mikey Burke.
She said her family continues to be tossed back and forth between state and FEMA housing programs.
Fenton said about 500 households are in a FEMA rental assistance program that provides 175% of fair market rent, or FMR, for families who found their own rental unit. Burke and others point to FEMA’s direct lease program, which paid landlords high rates to rent to fire survivors. Many say that caused a wave of evictions for non-fire-survivor renters — and drove up prices island-wide.
“You guys increased it to 175% FMR, and we’re telling you that’s still not enough for this secondary disaster that you guys helped to create,” Burke told officials at a meeting in Lahaina last week.
As a Lahaina homeowner, she said it’s having far-reaching effects.
“Between $3,000 and $5,000 [for monthly rent] is what we can qualify for. Anything outside of that, where do you guys think we’re going to get the money? It’s coming from our rebuild.”
Many residents said they’re having to pay much more than that. They shared that the situation is taking a steep toll.
“We’re losing sleep,” said Burke, filled with emotion. “We’re seeing each other in the stores, crying our eyes out. People are mentally breaking down because of this slow-moving secondary disaster that’s happening. And at every single turn, it seems like it just keeps getting worse.”
Fenton told residents at the meeting that FEMA doesn’t want to contribute to driving the rates even higher and that regulation should be considered on a local level.
