What happens when you're working full time, don't qualify for most assistance programs, but still cannot afford essentials? That's what new Maui County funding seeks to address.
“We're all working really hard and still struggling just to make ends meet month to month,” said Maui resident Stacey Moniz.
She knows what it’s like to fall within a public assistance gap.
“As a single mom, it was really hard,” she recalled of when her now-grown children were young. “Like my kids didn't have medical insurance growing up because I made too much money to pay to qualify for Quest (state-funded health coverage) but I didn't make enough money to be able to purchase medical insurance for both my kids.”
ALICE is a term that stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. It refers to working households above the federal poverty level who still struggle to afford basic living costs.
“We see so many folks right now who are falling off the benefits cliff,” said Maui County Councilmember Gabe Johnson of Lānaʻi. “They make too much to qualify for food stamps or SNAP or any type of assistance, but they don't make enough to make ends meet.”
Johnson helped develop Maui County's new Kamaʻāina Credit for ALICE Households Pilot Program. It will provide one year of monthly financial assistance to about 900 households on Maui, Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi.
“Obviously, we can see the cost of living going so high,” explained Johnson of his budget priorities. “I sat down with my team and I said, ‘How can we work on something that actually addresses the ALICE population?’”
He points out many people that work well over 40 hours per week, holding down multiple jobs, and still can’t cover expenses.
“These folks help keep our communities running, but they're also being squeezed by basic needs, and when you're stressed over bills, you can tell that it hurts people's wellness. It hurts people's happiness. [With this program] we give them a little breathing room,” Johnson said.
Needs by the numbers
According to a 2024 Aloha United Way report, about 40% of households across the state are living below the ALICE threshold. But for Maui County, that number is the highest in Hawaiʻi, at 53%.
“Those 53% include, you know, oftentimes, our educators, our teachers, our medical assistants, our CNAs, our those who work within the hotel industry,” explained Jee Lee, CEO of Maui United Way, the organization that's stewarding the county grant.
The numbers might be even higher now, said Lee, but an updated version of the biennial study will be released in the next few months.
“I think a lot of the folks that we're talking about, our friends and our neighbors, are Maui County community members that are basically one paycheck away from having to choose between medication or food or housing or their car payments or gas in their vehicle or their cell phone payments.”
According to the Aloha United Way report, nearly half of Maui County households reported also stated that they considered leaving Hawaiʻi due to cost of living.
For Moniz, she said she now lives together with her adult daughter, her daughter's husband and their children, to help ease expenses.
“Even families like mine, where we have three incomes supporting five people, you would think that would be enough, but the rents are just too much. We are spending so much money just on our housing.”
Moniz has worked in the nonprofit sector for decades and is now a director for the Maui Women's Business Center. She frequently hears about her clients' efforts to afford to live on Maui.
“They're working multiple jobs and still struggling to make ends meet and making choices about ‘which bill am I going to pay,' and 'do I use my credit card this month just to buy food,' or 'my child wants to play sports, so I'm gonna not pay this bill or get my car fixed or register my car this month,’” said Moniz. “You know, month to month, the choices that they have to make are real.”
How it works
Maui County has allocated $12 million for the 12-month pilot program, in which awarded applicants will receive between $500 and $800 per month. Applications will be administered through AidKit, an independent company that will vet and select applicants, which is not done on a first-come, first-served basis.
“If you are selected from the randomized selection process, you would then receive, for one to three people, $500 per household every month for 12 months, and for four or more people, $800 per household for that same 12-month duration,” explained Lee.
There are no specific qualifying expenses for the assistance, she said, but awarded residents will receive “light-touch care coordination” as part of the process.
“[We'll] do check-ins regularly with those families to see what we can do to support them in their continued growth and development, whether that be workforce development or educational support, saving for a vehicle that's more consistent for them, or just figuring out how really leverage these additional funds to be supportive to their overall household needs.”
What's next?
Lee said a key goal of the pilot program is also to gather data on ALICE needs across the county.
“It allows for us to get a better sense of what those monthly participants need help with, and provides us a year of learning in order to really figure out, how can we better support these community members that are in this service gap?”
Johnson hopes this is just a start.
“This is (a) much-needed program, and we need to expand it,” he said. “So this first year, we'll gather the data. Next year's budget, we'll talk more.”
Applications for the Kamaʻāina Credit for ALICE Households Pilot Program open on Monday, Oct. 19, with a deadline of Nov. 20. You can get more information on eligibility and applications through Maui United Way here.
