A Maui program kept Lahaina families together by paying households to take in fire survivors
As many as one-third of people displaced by the August 2023 Maui fires wound up in the homes of friends and family in the weeks after the disaster
WAILUKU, Hawaii — The Lahaina home Tamara Akiona shared with 10 people was never quiet, and she loved it that way.
Akiona, her husband, uncle, stepdaughter, and her best friend’s family filled the house once owned by her grandparents, with four bedrooms, two living rooms and a spacious backyard.
She remembers the happy anticipation of hearing the front door open and not knowing who'd come home. Someone was always in the kitchen cooking. Neighbors gathered in the evening to chat and share food from their gardens. Kids chased the shave-ice man as he rolled past in his truck.
“That’s the stuff I miss,” said Akiona, 51. “We just don’t have that anymore.”
The home was one of the 1,898 residential structures that burned in the August 2023 Maui fires, which killed at least 102 people and displaced 12,000. Now Akiona and her husband live in a two-bedroom condo in Wailuku, 40 minutes from Lahaina. When they moved, she insisted her uncle, Ron Sambrano, come with them.
“It’s like ‘Lilo and Stitch,’” said Akiona, referring to the Disney movie about family bonds. “Nobody’s left behind.”
Estimates say up to one-third of those displaced by the Maui fires wound up in the homes of friends and family in the weeks after the disaster. It was a natural solution on an island already struggling with a housing crisis and where values like generosity and family are deeply rooted. But increasing a household's size overnight can be stressful, and expensive.
The Akionas and families like them received support from a first-of-its-kind disaster-relief program. For one year, the Council for Native
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