Hawaii lawmakers target vacation rentals amid housing crisis Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• In the ruins of Lahaina, a surfing legend leads a volunteer army to get supplies to survivors
• Hawaii lawmakers take aim at vacation rentals after Lahaina wildfire worsens Maui housing crisis
• Owner of viral red house thinks this is why it survived Maui wildfires that turned everything else to ash
• Panama’s leading presidential candidate is a late entry promising a return to better times

For those stuck in place, health experts recommend wearing an N 95 mask, staying inside a home with sealed windows and using an air conditioning system with a Merv 13 filter, if possible. Anyone who shows signs of respiratory distress should get help from a health care provider immediately. The fires have been largely contained, officials said, but smoke and ash are still billowing upward in places. In 2012, the Oracle executive Larry Ellison bought 98 percent of Lanai, a Maui County island where Bill and Melinda Gates were married in 1994. “To locals, it’s a very touristy spot, but we embraced it,” said Jared Hedani, 37, a grant specialist of Japanese-Filipino ancestry and who has lived on Maui nearly his whole life.

In the ruins of Lahaina, a surfing legend leads a volunteer army to get supplies to survivors

Fire burns Plantation House Restaurant on Maui - Hawaii News Now

Fire burns Plantation House Restaurant on Maui.

Posted: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 07:00:00 GMT [source]

People who were evacuated from the western side of the island on Thursday at the Maui airport in Kahului, Hawaii, where school buses were being used as emergency shuttles. The streets of Lahaina are eerily silent this evening, with many of them empty. First responders appear to have made little progress in checking properties for victims. In Kahului, on Maui, power grids and cell towers were functioning fine, and there were plenty of supplies. But residents were still struggling to get ahold of friends and relatives in the Lahaina area. In the Costco parking lot, Sandy Mariano and her two daughters were packing their car with food and water to donate.

Hawaii lawmakers take aim at vacation rentals after Lahaina wildfire worsens Maui housing crisis

But as the fire strengthened, fueled by strong winds, Ms. Hara said they quickly realized their attempts to fight the fire would be futile. Officials are still working to restore power and water to the west side of Maui, Bissen said at the news conference. Mr. Perez gathered his mother and four daughters and they piled into his pickup truck.

Owner of viral red house thinks this is why it survived Maui wildfires that turned everything else to ash

Short-term rental owners said a phase-out would violate their property rights and take their property without compensation, potentially pushing them into foreclosure. The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a nonprofit, estimates at least 1,500 households — or a quarter of those who lost their homes — have left since the August wildfire. They first heard about the fire from a man who lives in Lahainaluna, a neighborhood about three and a half miles away, and uses two rooms beneath the house as a workshop. In this case, a regular asphalt composition roof would likely have done just as good a job as metal, as most have a Class A fire resistance rating, she added.

Panama’s leading presidential candidate is a late entry promising a return to better times

The morning light often reveals the hidden interior of ‘Īao Valley, your next destination. Hawaiian Airlines is asking travelers to hold off on contacting its call center with less urgent questions as it tries to address customers immediately affected by the wildfires. The carrier is offering refunds and rescheduling at no extra cost for customers with flights to Maui’s Kahului Airport through Aug. 31. Other airlines have also implemented flexible cancellation policies and exemptions because of the wildfires, including Alaska Airlines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and Air Canada. The wildfires that leveled the town of Lahaina on Maui wiped out shops, restaurants and a hotel built more than century ago, burning across some of the most spectacular and wealthiest enclaves of the state. High-profile billionaires including Oprah Winfrey, Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos all have homes on Maui.

The Hawaii Convention Center, a few miles east of Honolulu’s international airport, is being converted into an assistance center with the help of the Red Cross. It will serve as a temporary shelter for those travelers evacuated from Maui who are not immediately able to return home, the tourism authority said. For years, affordable housing developments have failed to get approved on Maui because of neighborhood opposition and bureaucratic red tape, said Justin Tyndall, assistant professor of economics at the University of Hawaii’s Economic Research Organization.

Daughter recalls the terrifying minutes when she had to flee a family temple.

On Tuesday morning, Lee Anne Wong was at the airport in Honolulu and getting ready to fly home to Maui, where she is the executive chef of Papa’aina at the historic Pioneer Inn in Lahaina. Aware of the wildfires, Ms. Wong and her team decided to close the restaurant early and send everyone home — just hours before wildfires ripped through the entire town. The blaze burned single family homes and apartments in and around downtown, which is the core of Lahaina’s residential housing. An analysis by the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization found a relatively low 7.5% of units there were vacation rentals as of February 2023. The Aug. 8 wildfire killed 101 people and destroyed housing for 6,200 families, amplifying Maui’s already acute housing shortage and laying bare the enormous presence of vacation rentals in Lahaina. It reminded lawmakers that short-term rentals are an issue across Hawaii, prompting them to consider bills that would give counties the authority to phase them out.

Cat reunites with family after surviving Maui wildfires 6 months ago: ‘It’s a beautiful thing’

Ms. Wong is now working out of the University of Hawaii’s Maui campus with World Central Kitchen, the global nonprofit organization founded by the chef José Andrés, as well as local business owners to prepare meals for evacuees. When she spoke to some of her employees, they conveyed to her just how fast — and devastating — the fires had been. The Pioneer Inn — which is close to Lahaina’s famed banyan tree — has been leveled, along with everything else, she said. Robbie Wares, 64, has lived for decades in a Lahaina neighborhood known as Kiawe Camp, near a Safeway grocery store. Jasmine Joao, a paralegal at an estate planning law firm in Maui, said in a telephone interview that the fires could disproportionately affect Native Hawaiian families in terms of their ability to recoup losses on their homes. Some of these “legacy” houses have had as many as 12 people bunking together in two or three bedrooms.

The smoke raises health risks for children and older people, even those some distance from the fires.

Kiha Kaina, 46, a Native Hawaiian tattoo artist who grew up in Lahaina, was one of the few people allowed into town to drop off water and supplies for residents stranded there. Airbnb is offering travelers in parts of Maui a flexible cancellation option through its “extenuating circumstances policy,” which could result in a full refund on eligible stays. But getting answers about your lodging could take some time, as disruptions to cell service and power outages across swaths of Maui have affected hotel operations. United has canceled reservations on flights to Maui, to use planes to return travelers to the continental United States. The airline also waived change fees and offered refunds to customers with plans to fly to, from or through Maui.

Updates: Brush fire near Honolua Bay at Kapalua Plantation Estates - Maui Now

Updates: Brush fire near Honolua Bay at Kapalua Plantation Estates.

Posted: Thu, 29 Jun 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

“We are going to need to house thousands of people,” said Green, adding that he has implored people to host those who have been displaced in their homes. It’s still very hazardous in areas still on fire, officials said at the news conference. "Things are falling, every minute around us,” said Bradford Ventura, the fire chief for Maui County. The alert, which showed up in red text on a white background, blared loudly three times, unlike any other noise Mr. Cudworth had heard from his phone before. After he opened his phone to read the message, it disappeared, he said, but it was enough to get them to flee the town.

Most of the firefighting activity in Lahaina today has focused on small hotspots. One firefighter just pulled into a residential neighborhood to douse a smoldering property that sat next to a few homes that survived the blaze. Kevin Moniz, who lives outside Olinda, near the center of Maui, said that this week he hosed down his property while nearby ranchers used bulldozers to create a fire break as flames raged up the hill. As he sat alongside hundreds of other displaced residents at the War Memorial Gym in Wailuku on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Perez pondered the future. Before the wildfire, he said, he had managed to move his girls into an affordable apartment — a tough feat in a place with an affordable housing problem.