Schatz requests HUD update on Maui housing needs in wake of wildfire; says use of TVRs have skewed the rental market
US Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) led a subcommittee hearing Tuesday morning on the FY25 Budget Request for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. He also requested updates on the housing needs for Maui from HUD Acting Secretary Adrianne Todman.
“Secretary, I want to talk to you about Maui,” said Schatz. “One hundred and one dead. Four thousand housing units destroyed—flattened, incinerated. Most of those properties are not even ready for rebuilding—still having the Army Corps cleaning up. Ten thousand people in hotels, transient vacation rentals and couches… Do you think this is a good plan?”
“You know, I think that we need to do better in terms of providing appropriate interim housing for the families of Maui. You are correct,” said Acting Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Adrianne Todman. “I think we are working as an administration. We’re working very closely with the governor and the mayor of Maui as well, to see what that does look like. I know there’s a number of different plans that they’ve brought to the table.”
Schatz, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, has led efforts to deliver additional federal disaster relief funding to Hawai‘i. He worked with congressional leaders and his colleagues in the Hawai‘i delegation to ensure $16 billion in disaster relief money was included in the short-term spending bill signed into law in last September. But he said there are mixed signals being sent to Hawaiʻi’s leaders regarding Maui’s housing solutions.
“I just want to be clear. The governor, the mayor, myself, Mazie Hirono, Jill Tokuda and Ed Case, signed the same letter. And the reason we did that is because… We’re being told different things by different people, different parts of the administration, different levels of the administration, different agencies, The White House,” said Schatz.
He said what is needed is transitional housing. “We got caught up in the nomenclature because some people use incorrectly the word ‘permanent.’ FEMA doesn’t like to do permanent housing, fine. FEMA does transitional housing all the time… “
“My understanding of what President Biden said when he landed on West Maui is that he was going to help the community to rebuild. He was not going to help the community to subsidize people staying in transient vacation rentals,” said Schatz.
The senator from Hawai’i explained what that means for wildfire survivors and non-victims alike.
“If you’re in a TVR [transient vacation rental], you’re probably not in Lahaina… So you’re already not where you should be,” he said, acknowledging that some people are in West Maui. “The minimum that is being paid to these TVR transient vacation rental owners is two-times or three-times the normal long-term rental rate,” he said, because vacation rental owners charge more than residential housing.
“So FEMA comes in and says, ‘Great, we’ll over subsidize this and we’ll house everybody, and then isn’t everybody happy? Well, the problem is this: Non-victims… Your lease expires and now the going rate is three-times your $2,200 for a two-bedroom one-bath. And so they’re all getting these notices from their landlord saying ‘I’m sorry, rates are up,'” Schatz explained.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW AD“We have absolutely skewed the rental market. So people are leaving who are non-victims as well as people are victims. On top of that—and I understand how FEMA operates (transitional housing, permanent housing, long term rental)… The problem is, long-term rental assumes long-term rental, not a vacation unit that has been essentially induced or commandeered into a rental situation,” said Schatz.
Schatz worried that the moment FEMA leaves town, those units “snap back into the vacation inventory,” leaving thousands of impacted residents in a “musical chair situation.”
“And they all go online and they all find the inventory does not exist. So whenever FEMA leaves town, these people are going to find themselves without houses,” said Schatz, noting that the scenario is an “unacceptable alternative.”
“And yet we continue to play ‘mother may I’ with FEMA about something that has been done in Houston and Puerto Rico and all over the world. And so I understand this is not HUD. I do understand that, but you are conducting a housing assessment and in cooperation with the County of Maui, and you do have something to say about housing, and you do have something to say in that kind of interstitial space in between disaster response and disaster recovery,” said Schatz.
“We cannot pretend that we are still in the wake of a smoldering burn zone, and any roof over anyone’s head is an acceptable alternative. We are too far from that moment to not think about what is happening to the island of Maui, its economy and its people,” said Schatz.
Schatz concluded saying: “… If you think that I am at the end of my rope, if that is the vibe you are getting, you’re absolutely correct. I would like you to carry back that: I am not satisfied. It is not true that you are working in partnership with us as an administration. It is true that we have a lot of paper going back and forth, and a lot of conference calls. All I’m asking for is what has happened in multiple other states and territories across the country.”
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana question Todman on inflation saying, she needs to “pay attention” to Sen. Schatz’s request. “Inflation is gutting our middle class like a fish.”
“I’ve been in this industry for many decades, and I would submit to you that some of the housing pressures we see right now is because housing has not, has not been built in almost 20 years. And you’re going to encourage, home builders to build by adding $31,000 to their costs. And you’re going to encourage people to buy by adding $31,000 to the price tag,” he said.
Speaking broadly to the national housing mission of HUD, Todman acknowledged “tough choices were made,” but she said the president’s budget proposal includes “bold, mandatory investments focused on increasing the nation’s housing supply, helping First-Time Homeowners by providing $10 billion for first generation down payment assistance, $15 billion to support additional apartments that low-income families can afford and make repairs to public housing, and $33 billion to prevent and address homelessness, particularly among veterans, our seniors and youth aging out of foster care.”
Together, she said this suite of funding and other tax proposals aim to “tackle housing affordability head on.”
“The budget proposal also requests $72.6 billion for HUD, nearly $300 million more than the 24 enacted, to support our core programs and housing delivery systems—that’s public and assisted housing, our home and CDBG programs, housing choice vouchers, our healthy homes programs to prevent evictions and address homelessness with the urgency it requires, any initiatives to boost homeownership and other wealth building opportunities,” said Todman.
“Whether it’s hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, or flooding, we need to be positioned to aid communities much faster than we are right now, and we simply cannot do that without Congress’s help. Senators creating and sustaining strong communities and providing access to affordable housing,” she said.
The committee will reconvene on Thursday, May 2 at 10 a.m. for a hearing with, the transportation secretary to discuss the DOT’s budget request.
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