Landlords Evicted Maui Residents and Housed Wildfire Survivors for More Money. FEMA Didn’t Take Basic Steps to Stop It.
Landlords Evicted Maui Residents and Housed Wildfire Survivors for More Money. FEMA Didn’t Take Basic Steps to Stop It.
FEMA officials said they didn’t want their housing program for survivors of Maui’s 2023 wildfires to displace any residents. But they didn’t bar the agency’s contractors from leasing properties previously occupied by long-term tenants.
When the federal government stepped in to rent housing for survivors of the devastating 2023 fires on Maui, officials said they didn’t want to drive up rental rates or give landlords an incentive to evict tenants in order to secure lucrative government contracts.
On paper, the plan sounded good: It would rely on finding empty vacation rentals and second homes, which was consistent with Federal Emergency Management Agency policy.
But new reporting shows that FEMA didn’t take basic steps to ensure that happened: When the agency inked contracts with private companies to identify homes they could rent for survivors, it didn’t prohibit them from signing up properties that had been occupied by long-term residents.
Without such safeguards, and with FEMA offering rates well above what residents typically paid each month in rent, some landlords kicked out tenants and housed wildfire survivors for more money. Local economists warned that rents could rise across the small island and that Maui’s housing crisis could intensify — and both have come to pass, Civil Beat and ProPublica found.