Click here to view the original article.

Just 11 days after the devastating Maui wildfires on Aug. 8, 2023, the privately funded ‘Ohana Hope Village broke ground in Kahului, moving fast to provide housing for people who had lost their homes.

“We were definitely ready to jump in and make something happen,” said Ashley Kelly, chief operating officer of Family Life Center, the nonprofit that is developing the project.

But the off-the-grid, 88-unit temporary village that initially was expected to take six months to build now is approaching the two-year mark.

The delays and increased costs — including a frustrating effort to connect to a permanent water source — have bumped the budget from $14 million to $20 million for the project on a 10-acre property at the corner of Kuihelani Highway and Puʻunēnē Avenue.

And while the project has taken much longer than anticipated, officials of ʻOhana Hope Village still believe it’s needed, especially with federal emergency housing aid for some survivors set to expire early next year.

The village’s first 44 units were completed in the spring with about 120 people from 33 households now living in them. The only unoccupied unit is used as a model to show prospective families or house volunteers, Kelly said.

Kelly said the remaining 44 units are expected to be completed by the end of August, if needed materials arrive. Survivors then would be able to move in by the end of September.

Although it’s been nearly two years since the fires destroyed about 2,200 structures in Lahaina and another 26 homes in Kula, an estimated 40% of displaced residents are still living in temporary situations, including federally backed housing, hotels or the homes of family and friends, according to a recent survey of about 950 fire survivors by the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization.

Kelly said the village’s units could help house the “second wave” of fire survivors whose leases are running out in February.

“So even though it took way longer than it should have or that we wanted it to, we see that we are already at a time when there’s still, there’s a need,” Kelly said.

Prospective residents are lined up for the next 44 homes, and ʻOhana Hope Village will inform them when it’s their turn to move in. There is a waitlist, although the number on it was not available by press time.

In April 2024, when the organization announced the village was open but later had to retract the news release, Kelly told Civil Beat more than 800 applications were received from households with more than 2,000 individuals. However, Kelly said last week that number reflected a time when most survivors were still in hotels.

The units, which take just a few minutes to set up, are temporary pop-ups of 160 square feet each and built with panels of a foam mixture that provides “the highest flame resistance,” according to Continest, the Hungarian-based manufacturer. They can be combined to create larger units, and each of the village homes come with an attached kitchen, bathroom and lanai.

The last units to be built require final touches, including installation of air-conditioning units and solar equipment, and framing of the homes’ decks. Kelly said the construction materials and air-conditioning units are on site; but they are waiting on the arrival of solar panels and batteries.

The 12-inch water pipeline that runs under Maui Veterans Highway to the project site was recently completed, and is now undergoing chlorination treatment to clean it out before it can be used, according to David Sellers, principal architect for the project and Hawai‘i Off-Grid Architecture and Engineering. The water connection to the project is expected to finally be done at the end of July, Kelly said.

The current occupied units have so far relied on potable water from four 30,000-gallon tanks that are refilled by a private company every couple of days, said Maude Cumming, CEO OF the Family Life Center.

She said the project has “taken so long” because the organization is essentially operating like the developer of a subdivision who has to do studies, seek permits, and put in new infrastructure.

At first, the project moved quickly. Property owner King’s Cathedral agreed to lease the land to Family Life Center. Deliveries of the first 20 foldable container units from Continest, whose products have been used in other humanitarian aid responses, arrived on Maui on Aug. 20, 2023, the day before President Joe Biden visited Lahaina.

Kelly declined to share the cost of the units because they’d been given “a huge discount.” Continest does not list prices on its website.

According to the Family Life Center, a number of factors contributed to the project delay: the months it took for the remaining units to arrive, the unexpected cost and effort required for the state-mandated archaeological and environmental surveys, and the need to raise money for some solar panels and batteries after a donor fell through.

But perhaps the most difficult factor has been the water. Early on, the project planned to hook up temporarily to Alexander & Baldwin’s line on the property. Both sides disagree on where communications broke down. Family Life Center said A&B stopped replying, but A&B said it hasn’t heard from the organization since mid-March of 2024. 

“Our understanding was that they would next pursue the necessary regulatory approvals to ensure both the permanent and short-term water solution would be implemented safely,” A&B spokesperson Andrea Galvin told the Hawaiʻi Journalism Initiative on Friday.

Galvin said the company awaits “confirmation from them of critical government, health and safety approvals.”

Kelly said Family Life Center decided the requirements it would take to hook up to A&B’s line were too extensive for just a temporary water connection, so it continued to move forward with a permanent water solution. But because the nonprofit was pursuing a permanent waterline, it couldn’t go through the expedited processes allowed under the state’s emergency proclamations after the fire, Kelly added. 

After ‘Ohana Hope Village received approval to drill underneath the highway to connect to the county’s system, Sellers said the organization secured a contract with a company to do the drilling in the fall of 2024. But because the specialized equipment needed is in short supply in Hawai‘i and the project needed permission from state transportation and historic preservation agencies before excavating, the work kept getting pushed back and didn’t start until January.  

Sellers said the drilling was completed around February or March, but because of some large boulders underground, the waterline didn’t go in as straight as they’d hoped, and couldn’t hold the pressure correctly. After using a camera to nail down the leak, they dug a keyhole into the roadway and repaired the line. The work wrapped up a few weeks ago.

Kelly said the project is now “in a dispute” with the drilling company after they were forced to redo the work. She declined to name the company. 

Maui County has been in regular communication with the contractor of the pipe work and is prepared to hook up the project to the county system once the work is finished, Deputy Water Supply Director James “Kimo” Landgraf said last week in a statement to the Hawaiʻi Journalism Initiative.

The building permit for the project also took several months, though it didn’t hold back construction of the homes, Sellers said. County records show Family Life Center applied for a building permit in December 2023 and received it in May 2024. But a KITV report in October 2023 and a video posted by the nonprofit in November 2023 showed some units already up and the installation of a community center underway. 

The organization also received an after-the-fact grading permit that it applied for in November 2023 and received in March 2024, county records show.

Kelly said Thursday the county gave permission for the project to proceed before the opening of a dedicated permit center for rebuilding after the fires. County officials could not be immediately reached Friday for comment on the project’s permit process. At the time it issued the permit in May 2024, the county told Civil Beat that it had been waiting for infrastructure and road access to be installed.

In the summer of 2024, after the county granted the project approval to open the first 16 units, Michele Fernandez and her family moved into two units. 

The fire destroyed the five-bedroom, three-bathroom home that Fernandez’s sister-in-law owned off Lahainaluna Road. Living in it were Fernandez, her husband, their two sons, then 17 and 21, her sister-in-law, her adult nephews and a girlfriend of a nephew. 

Days after escaping the fast-moving inferno, they were sleeping in their vehicles and helping out at King’s Cathedral, which had turned into a makeshift shelter and hub for supplies. A church member offered to house them in a carport, where some of the family lived for nine months.

“Even though they say that you’re not in the way, you know that you are,” said Fernandez, who worked as a disaster case manager for Family Life Center from November 2023 to October 2024.

Now, she and her husband live in a studio-style unit with furniture from Family Life Center that includes a couch, table, cabinets and a lounge chair. They have a shower with a tub and a kitchenette with two burners, a sink and small appliances that include a toaster oven so she can bake. 

The village’s shared community space has a full-size kitchen as well as washers and dryers.

Fernandez said she’s “never had an issue” with water since moving to ‘Ohana Hope Village last summer. Sometimes it has to be shut off for work, but there’s always been water available for showering and washing dishes. She and her family had a drinking water dispenser in Lahaina, so they bought one for their new home that can hold a 5-gallon jug.

Her husband drives daily to his job at the Marriott in Kā‘anapali, a constant reminder of what they’ve left behind. He’s a fisherman, and he misses the ocean, Fernandez said. 

“We’re all different people now,” she said. “We’ve all handled it differently. But I would say, looking at my family, I think that we have just immersed ourselves in keeping busy. Sometimes you can talk about it to people and it’s like, ‘OK, this is going to be my testimony.’ But then other times you just kind of leak like a pressure cooker.”

Fernandez says she is starting to feel the sense of community she misses in Lahaina, noting that residents sometimes drop off bags of limes and papayas on neighbors’ doorsteps or bring by bananas to share.

Fernandez isn’t sure when she will return to Lahaina. Her family is just waiting for a retaining wall on their property to be cleared so they can start rebuilding. 

Cumming said residents won’t be charged rent for at least the first year they live in the village. Federal funding is helping to cover the costs of rent, said Cumming, who declined to name the agency but said that information would be provided in the future. 

The project is nearly fully funded but is still seeking about $1.5 million more in donations, Cumming said. The total cost includes donated labor and materials, with groups like the Mennonite Disaster Service lending a hand and local Rotary Clubs providing funding for solar and battery equipment. Sellers said half of the solar panels were donated by global manufacturer Jinko.

Maui County Council Member Tamara Paltin, who holds the West Maui seat, said the struggle to get the temporary project off the ground is “indicative of a lot of our problems with even making permanent housing.”

Water and sewer are often among the biggest holdups for projects, she said, pointing to the example of Pulelehua, a development in West Maui that is ready to move forward but is waiting on state approvals for water use.

Even two years after the fire, “people are constantly needing housing,” and “there’s a real fear” about housing assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency ending in February. Kilohana, FEMA’s temporary housing project in Lahaina, is also set to close in February, although it could be extended.

“So it’s a possibility that this could come in clutch for folks like that,” Paltin said of ‘Ohana Hope Village. 

Responding to concerns about the project remaining unfinished after nearly two years, Kelly said: “This was the first disaster … any of our leaders had ever been through” and “we were building the plane while it was in the air.”

She acknowledged that “there’s a lot of frustration,” but added that there has also been a lot of good moments, with people coming together.

“We’re on the home stretch,” she said. “Let’s just celebrate the victories we have now.”