Some recommendations for regular Lahaina homeowners if your home burned down:
- Hire a public insurance adjuster to help you with your claim, in order to get respect from the insurance company. Prepare, if you can, to not get back to living in Lahaina until about 2027. You know things take a long time in HI, it’s that way with most everything. Yeah brah, it’s Hawaiian time, sorry to say.
- You are probably NOT well insured enough to hire your own architect to go through the long Maui County design process to build a fancy home. While architecture is a valuable profession, it will be hard to get approvals in Maui for years. Instead, the County of Maui should standardize the rebuilt buildings, and preapprove say, 10 different home designs, and offer them for free.
- Don’t just take the insurance companies first offer, which will be for about 1/3 of what you need. Most people in HI are just getting by, and its not “the Hawaiian way” to be focused on money. Big Insurance knows this, and will waive low six figure checks at people. Not many people have ever received a check for six figures. But you can’t rebuild until the government sorts out all these problems, and you probably prefer to be part of a Group Solution, with some protection for your rights. It’s very, very hard to deal with all the details of building a new house on your own – that’s why most attorneys who specialize in construction always buy already built homes for themselves.
-Be aware that the Additional Living Expense part of your Homeowners Insurance usually has a 12 month time limit – probably no one will start rebuilding in Lahaina by then, because underground electric lines and water supply need to be installed before contractors will start. The State and FEMA should provide extra Additional Living Expense funds for “as long as rebuilding takes”.
-As an individual used to living in a smallish single family home in Lahaina, be realistic with yourself, asking “Who was I when I started living in this home at a younger age, and who will I be when I get back in my home?” Hint- you will be older! If you are aged (like your author), you may want to live in a home that you don’t need to maintain, such as an ADA compliant condo. If you lived next to a friend who also had a single-family home but really can’t keep it up anymore, maybe you could work with the government to each trade your land for outright ownership in a couple of new 3 bedroom condo units each. (Maui condos often sell for $1 million). You could also negotiate that you pay no HOA assessments for your remaining lifetime. (You’ve been through a lot. These things are negotiable for those with scarce land.)
- Don’t be fooled by vulture developers and land buyers who offer to buy your lot. HI’s new and unproven Governor, physician turned politician Josh Green (D), has said “The State won’t be letting vulture buyers get rezoning for lots purchased after this tragedy”. That said, there aren’t enough startup businesses in the islands, and many hyper-ambitious people are real estate crazy in Hawai’i. They will be trying to work deals, if only from an excess of business zeal..
- Homeowners likely just paid this years Property Tax. Since your house is gone, all owners should ask for a County of Maui Property Tax Waiver until 2030, to give you time to get back on your feet.
- Maui homebuilding contractors are not staffed or equipped to build 3,000 homes per year. Lately they have built more like 500, island wide. Working just on your own, you will have a difficult time attracting the interest of a homebuilder, unless your home is a $3 million dollar plus mansion – like in Southern California, there are plenty of those being built elsewhere on Maui. Your competitors for the contractors attention aren’t building in bombed out Lahaina. In fact, there may be too few for profit privately-owned home construction companies who even want to work in Lahaina. (It is often more than a one hour drive from the main towns of Wailuku/Kahului – where most supplies come from. Maui is an island of several separate small “Metro Areas” and these can be separated by hours long drives.)
The above facts create big problems for the individual homeowner looking to get her home back. These problems call for New Methods of Construction and Group Action to get Lahaina Town rebuilt. Here’s How It Can Be Done:
1) The University of Hawaii Maui campus should sponsor a new major in Green Tropical Construction, and buy a concrete based 3D House Printer and train students to use it. Looking at one of the Maui billionaires like Oprah Winfrey or Jeff Bezos to fund this. Construction and Real Estate Management will always be one of the main jobs in any vacation oriented community like Maui. UH Maui is in growth mode, but so far offers only the incredibly useful training in Carpentry and Maintenance (Plumbing) coursework. The first thing the students could build would be on campus housing for both faculty and students. (Instructors can’t find housing on Maui, same problem for students)
2) FEMA should purchase several 3D concrete House Printers to be loaned to communities that have suffered tragedies and loan them to The County of Maui a.s.a.p.
3) The County of Maui should approve the designs of no more than 10 all concrete house types of various sizes and square footage, all to be printer. The prices should be set by the County for each home type. All homes should be modern with ADA compliant entries and rooms, with at least 3 bedrooms, with all bedrooms having an ensuite bathroom. The bedrooms should be widely separated from one another, because multiple generations of Hawaiian families often live together. The smallest home would be designed to fit the smallest lots in Lahaina, probably around 1500 square feet. (Many Lahaina homes were only 800 square feet before, as well as being built from wood, riddled with termites and built in the 1800s). While consumer choice is important, the County of Maui is simply not staffed to review thousands of different one-off home plans – logic dictates that the town be rebuilt most efficiently – hence 10 home plans made of concrete to better resist fire, hurricanes and termites, all things that have rendered houses in HI uninhabitable in recent times.
If the County of Maui doesn’t take coordinated action, regular home building will mean at least 10 years to rebuild more than 3,000 single family homes. Each home takes 6 months. A 3D printer concrete home can be done in one month, and the walls/foundation in 30 hours or so.
All new homes are already REQUIRED by HI law to have solar hot water heaters on the roof, and all should be rebuilt with solar electrical panels and their own electricity storage devices, which FEMA and the State of HI should subsidize, and buy in large quantity on behalf of the homeowners. And yes, they should have solar reflective non-flammable roofs – some Lahaina homes had wood shingles.
4) Be aware that most homeowners, after the long delay, will only be able to afford the least expensive smallest 3 bedroom home. Keeping perspective, this will still be a brand new much safer home with probably a better floor plan, and likely a zero electrical bill, versus the $400 plus per month before the fire tragedy. The new homes will also have super-efficient air conditioning, which most homes did NOT have before this fire. (Home heating is never needed in HI, except above 2,000 feet in elevation, and even then it is optional. While many Hawaiians don’t love air conditioning, Lahaina is one of the hottest places in HI, and ceiling fans alone won’t do it – remember, one day you might want to sell your house to someone who needs AC. Of course, every room will likely have a ceiling fan, that’s normal all over HI.).
5) Contractors wanting to learn the faster, more profitable 3D building will be requested to form a Consortium or Joint Venture. Probably 10 of the larger contractors can spend time learning and building, say 300 homes each. Here’s the way to make this fair – the County needs to require that the smallest homes get built first, and then the condos, and only then can the larger and oceanfront homes be rebuilt.
6) There will be no more huge backyard propane tanks in Lahaina, these exploded and contributed to the massive fire. There will be no need for propane to heat your hot water, because the Federal Government needs to form a Lahaina Utility District, and cover the entire area from where the houses stop up to the green mountains with a massive utility scale solar farm – with rocks on the ground beneath the solar panels. Designed well, this would function as a firebreak to protect Lahaina Town. With proper electrical storage, and possibly a few smaller windmills, this would provide all of Lahaina’s power needs. The State and the town could consider storing energy for nighttime via large scale storage such as that from Antora Energy. One unit of this type could supply electricity to the entire town, as well as helping schools and badly needed emergency shelters.
(Companies that want to work with businesses only, like Antora, should be required to allow an experiment to see if their tech works for a small town.)
7) Lahaina could also build several new 3 floor condo developments, which are common in nearby towns in HI. These could be sold to victims with very low interest mortgages, or held for rental, with the income going to heirs to Lahaina property who are under the age of 21. Aging owners could certainly sell their land with proper contracts, in order to facilitate more condo units. Other than New York City, probably a greater percentage of Hawaiians live in condos than any other place in the USA.
8) The focus on underage heirs is important. Anywhere such a tragedy happened in the USA, you would have a significant number of dead property owners who were intestate (without a Last Will and Testament) or whose Will burned up in the fire. HI is possibly a place where even fewer of the deceased had a Will, given some general local skeptical attitudes about The Law. ( Understandable, given the truth that the US violated the law in taking the islands, way back in the 1890s.)
Many homes had all the potential heirs die in the fire, others were owned by persons who will end up being intestate, and many other sad situations will arise.
The State of HI needs to proactively search for heirs, and where there are none, the State needs to combine several lots into larger lots to build new low-rise condos.
These condos could have a mix of owners and tenants with below market rates.
9) I have long advocated the the Money Creation powers of the Federal Reserve Bank (“the Fed”) should pay to replace the money destroyed in catastrophes affecting more than 100 persons. If the Fed can create new money to help banksters who made poor business decisions, it can surely replace infrastructure and lost homes – or at least expedite the replacement. Don’t whine that “this will cause inflation” – if contractors look to make a killing, then the US government should do the rebuilding, at cost. Especially when there aren’t enough construction resources in the small area that needs rebuilding. If government can prosecute the destruction of wars, it should handle the rebuilding after tragedies. If government takes no action, I promise you that we’ve never seen inflation like we’ll see in Lahaina home prices. Too few builders, too many desperate homebuyers equals price gouging.
10) The State of HI already has a goal to “Use 100% renewable fuels by 2050”.
Lahaina translates to “hot cruel sun” – the sun shines strongly and regularly at 20 degrees North latitude there – yes, most homes can generate enough solar power to last all night and beyond.
Lahaina can be the test case for faster 3D rebuilding (and time is money when working with builders). The new concrete homes will be safer, and with the best floor plans and state of the art energy efficiency and energy storage, Lahaina residents can again live in one of the best towns in HI, and be a model of Green Living with your choice of roommates/family for tropical climates everywhere. The new homes would be ADA compliant, with more privacy and lower operating costs.
In the Hawaiian language and in everyday speech by locals, the vowels are usually pronounced similarly to Spanish, Italian or French. A is ahh, as in “stick out your tongue and say ahh, E is eh, I is ee and so on.
So, in Hawai’i, the unloved Hawaiian Electric Company is called HECO (Hey-co), and Maui Electric is may-co. It’s time for this company to “Hey- go”.
Maui’s other utilities are all County run not for profits, and provide reasonable cost services. MECO does not. Instead, like most for profit utilities, its main interest is in increasing the cost of its equipment – the so called “Rate Base”.
With regulators allowing rates to provide, say a 9% profit rate of return on the Rate Base, any rational business is going to increase its Personnel Costs, Repair Costs and Capital Equipment to earn the rate of return on a larger number. Think of this, MECO is going to use the costs associated with this tragedy (which it may have caused) to increase its profits. MECO has done nothing in terms of building storage for the abundant clean energy that it can generate.
By stark contrast, the tiny Kaua’i Island Utility Coop (with only 39,000 customers) has in the works a plan to use solar from “Kaui’s Lahaina spot” (the very sunny SW side) to pump water back uphill to create nighttime hydro power. The same water can be used repeatedly. See: https://www.kiuc.coop/wkep .
Most Maui visitors have noticed the string of huge windmills along the ridge running up to the West Maui mountains. MECO often has these windmills turned completely off during the day, because so many homes and businesses have solar panels, and don’t need any grid power. Instead of storing power, MECO does nothing – there is more money in NOT storing green power for nighttime usage.
So, tiny Kaui, with 1/3 as many people as Maui, is building a new stored hydro power project.
MECO/HECO could have easily done that using the windmills that are already almost on top of the rainy West Maui Mountains. It’s a simple concept very similar to the plan outlined by the non-profit Kauai Island Utility Coop. There are already underutilized irrigation works in the West Maui mountains that could be repurposed, or could be dual usage. Much of the island’s water supply already comes from these mountains, and yes, water flows downhill everywhere!
HECO has proven that for profit utilities get the kind of result we’d have if we still only had one phone company – Ma Bell. No innovation, no malama (caring) for the customers. Instead, just perverse incentives to overcharge and underdeliver. And it will get worse, not better.
The State of HI should receive a low interest rate loan from FEMA to simply go to the market and purchase all outstanding stock of HECO for the 1.62 billion dollars that stock ticker symbol HE is now worth.
If you want to track the declining value of ticker HE, see here:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/HE/hawaiian-electric-industries/market-cap
By the time the State could get ready to purchase the company, HECO could even be bankrupt. The assets of HECO should be turned over to a citizen owned cooperative. If it works in tiny Kaua’i, it could work on the other islands. If the State had Initiatives to the People, the voters of HI would favor this by 80% or more.
We have to turn our heartbreak into a better future for all people in tropical areas, because Hawaiians are the nicest people in America, and deserve our best ideas, a green energy future, and our best behavior as tourists/guests in this splendid ecosystem.
Also, while Maui needs a break from tourists until maybe September, come on back after October 2023. There is a love/hate relationship with tourists, but the economy is built on tourism. Sure, vacationers for the next few months may want to stay in Kihei, or UpCountry in Kula or elsewhere. But the resorts near Lahaina in Kaanapali weren’t burned down, and will likely reopen soon.
Credit is given to Dkos regulars Pakalolo and Pule4Puna for their stories, and lists of places for donations.
If like many Hawai’i lovers you need a smile and maybe to shed a tear, the best band in the world has this video, and many hit songs on 6 albums including the album Black and White, by The Green:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vOVuInV390&ab_channel=TheGreen
