LAHAINA, Hawaii — The federal response to last year’s Maui wildfires delivered not only immediate and much-needed aid in the form of billions of dollars of financial assistance, short-term housing solutions, hazard abatement, clean-up and other support but also unintended problems for the local rental housing market and a host of meaningful lessons for the next major disaster, according to testifiers at last week’s Congressional field hearing at the Lahaina Civic Center.
The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce hearing was chaired by Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Tex., and included Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif. Reps. Jill Tokuda and Ed Case, both D-Hawaii, are not on the subcommittee but were granted waivers to participate in the questioning.
As Porter noted in her introductory comments, the hearing was convened to assess the federal government’s response to the wildfires and to identify opportunities to improve federal response to future disasters.
“We’re here on a bipartisan basis to respond from all levels of government to last year’s wildfires and to learn so that we can apply what we have experienced here to improve future disaster response,” Porter said. “One takeaway that I’ve gathered already is that the United States needs to center affordable housing in its disaster response. I think this was a lesson from (Hurricane) Katrina as well. I think the way that happened here is showing we are still struggling to understand how to provide housing in the wake of disasters. Lahaina, like any area, has its own challenges and barriers to overcome in building affordable housing, but there are common root problems present from Hawaii to my home state of California.”
Among those testifying were Federal Emergency Management Agency regional administrator Bob Fenton; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers commander Col. Eric Swenson; Small Business Administration Office of Disaster Recovery and Resiliency associate administrator Francisco Sanchez; Environmental Protection Agency deputy regional administrator Cheree Peterson; Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, adjutant general for the Hawaii Department of Defense; Maui Mayor Richard Bissen; Hawaii Community Foundation senior vice president Lauren Nahme; Lahaina Town Action Committee president Sne Patel; and Na Aikane O Maui cultural programs coordinator Keeaumoku Kapu.
In framing the discussion, Porter emphasized the fact that Maui was already experiencing a housing crisis before the fires, but the disaster exacerbated the problem to untenable levels.
“Competition with tourists, mainlanders scooping up properties to rent as vacation homes combined with a lack of new construction played a part in putting stable, affordable housing out of reach for many of the families who live and work here,” Porter said. “The wildfires supercharged Maui’s housing crisis.
“For starters, the destruction of a chunk of Maui’s already limited supply of homes further exacerbated the imbalance between supply and demand, hiking up rents across the island, even for families who were not displaced,” she said. “When FEMA began providing disaster relief payments to assist survivors, some landlords reportedly took advantage of the crisis by ousting their existing tenants so they could lease to fire survivors for a higher monthly rent. State leaders have worked to crack down on this abuse, but in many cases, the damage had already been done.”
The testifiers painted a generally positive picture of the government response, noting how immediate needs were assessed and addressed in a chaotic, rapidly unfolding situation. They also acknowledged obstacles, inefficiencies and other challenges that could be better handled in future disaster-response efforts.
Fenton said taking into consideration the cultural implications of the disaster and subsequent response was key in FEMA’s efforts to make sure its actions met the needs of the community and gain a foothold in winning the trust of those in need of the agency’s programs and services.
“In my 28 years with FEMA, I’ve seen numerous disasters destroy communities across the country, while some have been bigger in size, none have been as complex as Maui,” Fenton testified. “My experience working in the Pacific has taught me a lot, mostly to listen more than I speak and to surround myself with cultural leaders I can learn from. It has also underscored the importance of ensuring that every federal employee who deploys here understands the uniqueness of the culture they are working in.”
To that end, Fenton said he requested and was granted a senior adviser for Native Hawaiian affairs to advise on intergovernmental relationships and interagency coordination and to consult with the Native Hawaiian community. FEMA also established a cultural protocol task force to focus on increasing understanding of the diverse cultural backgrounds FEMA personnel would be working with, raising awareness within the community about FEMA’s programs and procedures, and incorporating relevant cultural practices into the planning, implementation and delivery of FEMA-supported services.
Fenton said such support helped during sensitive operations like debris removal, which was handled by the Army Corps of Engineers.
USACE commander Swenson said residential debris removal in Lahaina was completed months ahead of schedule, in part because of the emphasis being sensitive to cultural concerns, maintaining open communication with the community and contracting local labor to keep funding circulating within the local economy.
“This approach was critical in ensuring that our efforts were not just about rebuilding infrastructure, but also about doing our part to heal a community deeply rooted in its heritage,” Swenson said. “Building trust with local community and finding a suitable location for debris storage were significant challenges without trust. Residents would be hesitant to sign up to our debris removal program. That would have delayed the removal of hazardous debris and the recovery process.
“We built trust by using our public affairs teammates to reach across all media, by being present at weekly community meetings and by reaching out to community elders,” he testified. “Our contractors also hired local labor and local cultural monitors. When a crew, comprised of locals, arrived at a residential lot, residents felt a personal connection to the debris crew. In some instances, family members were clearing family parcels. This built credibility within the community and encouraged others to sign up for the debris removal program.”
Swenson also noted USACE’s success in quickly constructing a temporary campus for students displaced by the destruction of King Kamehameha III Elementary School and initiating development and construction of the Kilohana interim housing project.
While the committee acknowledged the breadth and depth of work accomplished under extreme conditions by the federal agencies represented at the hearing, members probed several areas of operational concern and sought explanations and possible fixes for response initiatives that may not have produced the intended results.
Both Porter and Tokuda questioned Sanchez about the disparity between the 6,028 fully completed loan applications received by the SBA and the 2,278 that were approved.
Porter’s initial line of questioning led to a discussion on the protracted nature of recovery and rebuilding and the need to increase disbursement and repayment periods and continue to provide assistance with the application process.
Tokuda’s follow-up questions noted that many businesses were still paying off pandemic-era loans and were unable to secure further assistance, while others had to withdraw applications because they were unable to get documentation or answer all the required questions. In addition to the more than half of all home and business applications that were denied by SBA, about two-thirds of applications from those with existing Economic Injury Disaster Loans were denied or withdrawn.
Sanchez said SBA has initiated a reconsideration campaign to address just those types of issues.
“That means if you get a ‘no’ from SBA, we’re going to go back and figure out why the answer was ‘no’,” he said. “Typically, if you’re within five points of (our minimum credit score), there’s a decent chance we can get you back to ‘yes’ by working with you through SBA district offices and our resource partners. We expanded that here to within 10 points. And so let me tell you what that actually means. It means because we go back and help get people to ‘yes’ and to devote the time, energy and the resources that is required for that.”
Sanchez said that he personally worked on one case on Maui in which a person whose application was initially declined ended up receiving $574,000 in assistance from SBA.
Much of the session was spent discussing federal efforts to house survivors in the immediate aftermath of the fires and transition them to interim and longer-term housing in the months that followed. As Bissen discussed in depth, the effort was fraught with unintended consequences that disrupted the island’s rental market, including owners of short-term rental properties who displaced existing tenants in favor of those whose FEMA benefits allowed for higher rents.
“Survivors dealt with the uncertainty and challenge of moving multiple times while in non-congregate housing, endured a burdensome process of complicated applications and experienced confusion navigating FEMA eligibility requirements, all while suffering through post-disaster trauma,” Bissen said. “Although FEMA is designed to offer temporary housing solutions for survivors, many of these options were impractical for an island community already grappling with a severe housing crisis. Additionally, FEMA’s Rental Assistance Program posed unintended consequences negatively impacting our rental housing market island-wide, causing further distress for other Maui residents who were displaced.”
Bissen said expanding FEMA’s permanent housing construction program to states outside the continental United States would help in addressing long-term housing solution and integrating the Department of Housing and Urban Development into the recovery process would also expedite permanent housing options.
Fenton said that given the speed at which housing needed to be secured, FEMA’s initial strategy, including the decision to tap the island’s short-term rental inventory, was the best approach.
“I don’t know if there would have been any quicker solution, just because of the limitation of infrastructure, water and other issues, to develop sites,” Fenton said. “It’s taken us somewhere around nine months to do that. We’ve assessed over 20 different properties, and really had limited solutions to do that. Most of the people want to stay on the west side, and so there’s just not a lot of good solutions.
“I think using vacation rentals was the best solution and the most timely solution,” he said. “I think in retrospect, we should go back and look at that and figure out in combination with local authorities or regulations how can we more manage that better in the future, if we had to do something similar. We may also want to look at a quicker housing solution. You know, right now, our housing solution is really what we use on the mainland that we’re exporting out here, which takes a long time. So can we use something that is more austere, that uses maybe solar or other things that don’t require as much infrastructure as we do right now.”
In assessing FEMA’s current and future ability to continue supporting Maui wildfire survivors and respond to future disasters Case, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, noted the depletion of the existing Disaster Relief Fund and FEMA’s implementation of an immediate needs funding policy wherein remaining funds would be distributed based on the severity of immediate needs. He asked Fenton what would happen if the DRF is not replenished soon.
“It delays long-term recovery,” Fenton said. “It delays building and rebuilding of infrastructure. We’re unable to obligate the funding that’s needed to rebuild permanent infrastructure. While we currently, right now, have sufficient funds to continue to help individuals with housing or other immediate needs, that too is starting to be threatened. We’re at a very good stage right now, with debris being moved, water coming on, power coming on, to actually start rebuilding the infrastructure, and that will delay that process and elongate the recovery and impact Maui further.”
Michael Tsai covers local and state politics for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at michael.tsai@charter.com.