Maui wildfires one year later: Kilohana housing to provide 169 units to displaced survivors by October 2024

At the one year mark since the fires, the Federal Emergency Management Agency provided an update on its Kilohana group housing site. The development, located on 34 acres mauka of a cane haul road near Wahikuli Road, will provide temporary housing for 169 households, and is anticipated to be complete by the end of October 2024.

Gov. Josh Green, M.D. reflected on the early days of response saying, “The largest achievement in the early phase of the response was moving 7,796 people from mass shelters into hotels. The biggest obstacle that we wrestled with after that initial move of people into hotels was to find enough long-term housing—because they had to get their lives normalized.”

Today, he said, he’s encouraged by efforts to rebuild transitional housing together. “That’s why I’m so grateful for the partnerships with FEMA [and] the county. All of us have to come together,” he said in a FEMA video interview.

“Today we’ve been able to successfully, through our Direct Lease Program, provide people a more stable housing solution,” said Bob Fenton, FEMA Region 9 Administrator.

“We continue to work to provide more secure housing,” he said, noting progress on the Kilohana site which will provide more temporary housing units. The Kilohana project will assist those who have not been able to secure housing on the west side, the ability to come back to the community.

Fenton said work continues to improve housing resources for those directly impacted. “We’re committed not only in the short-term to continue to improve housing, and the availability of housing to everyone as we work toward long-term solutions of rebuilding the houses that were lost,” he said.

“Kilohana—its translation literally means the best part of the kapa cloth,” said Summer Sylva, FEMA cultural protocol task force lead. “What that means is providing a pinnacle of services—ensuring that housing and communities that are there to welcome and shelter entire families, and households who lost everything and are working to rebuild—that those neighborhoods start to really come together to support recovery and resilience.”

Sylva reflected upon what the future might have in store saying: “And as we look out into the burn zone area and see the rebuild happening of some of the historic sites, I’m confident that the community has the capacity to stay in this conversation with FEMA, with its federal partners, and identify innovative, exciting, new investments and opportunities that will allow those visions to become manifest.”