by Keli‘i Akina
The wildfires that destroyed much of Maui’s beloved Lahaina town two years ago upended countless lives, and so far, the drawn-out rebuilding process has done them no favors.
Since that horrific event, which killed 102 people and destroyed thousands of homes, businesses, and other structures, restoration efforts have been hampered mostly by the same layers of state and county zoning, permitting, and other regulations that have exacerbated Hawaii’s housing crisis in general and made life in the islands difficult for decades.
State and county officials have made some progress in lifting burdensome building rules, but there is much more that could be done to help.
A new policy brief published by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, of which I am president, outlines several actions our state and county policymakers could take to hasten the community’s recovery.
In the introduction to “Four more ways to speed up Lahaina’s wildfire recovery,” Grassroot policy analyst Jonathan Helton writes that the fire victims “should have been able to rebuild their lives, homes, businesses, and other community structures without unreasonable delays. But sadly, two years later, few structures have been rebuilt and many residents remain stuck in agonizing limbo, if they haven’t already given up and moved away.”
Helton writes in the report’s conclusion that “if policymakers do not move faster to remove the legal barriers that have been blocking the rebuilding of Lahaina, the town will lose its sense of community and historic charm, and its residents will continue to move away or go homeless while its economy sputters into oblivion.”
The four policy changes discussed in the report are:
>> Reform the county’s review process for historic properties.
>> Waive or defer the county’s infrastructure-improvement assessments.
>> Waive by executive order state rules that apply to the rebuilding of destroyed or damaged structures in Lahaina’s shoreline setback area, or use already-legal county workarounds to those rules wherever possible.
>> Provide short-term tax relief for all Maui businesses and long-term tax relief for properties in the burn area.
The report also recaps earlier recommendations by Grassroot, as presented in a memo sent in January 2024 to federal, state, and Maui County government officials and a policy brief published shortly before the anniversary of the fires titled “Six ways to speed up the recovery and rebuilding of Lahaina.”
One of the suggestions in that July 2024 report was to relax the state’s rules that would apply to the rebuilding of structures destroyed or significantly damaged in the state’s Special Management Area, which lawmakers did in part this past legislative session.
Additionally, Maui County has contracted with a private company to establish an emergency permitting office and waived its zoning regulations concerning so-called nonconforming structures and uses.
But even though some changes have been made, much more needs to be done to improve the accessibility and predictability of the rebuilding process for all who want to reclaim what was theirs before tragedy struck.
As I stress in the preface of Grassroot’s latest report, Maui deserves the best we have to offer, and it is my sincere hope that all of these well-researched recommendations will be implemented.
KELI‘I AKINA is president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.
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