Lahaina Community Land Trust secures first piece of land to steward in Lahaina hands

The Lahaina Community Land Trust (LCLT) has secured its first parcel of community-owned land, that will be held in Lahaina hands forever, for the benefit of the local community for generations to come. The property at 1651 Lokia Street was secured by the LCLT in partnership with The Conservation Fund, a national land conservation organization.

It was previously owned by Rick Kimball and his wife, who are in their 80s. In the immediate aftermath of the Aug. 8, 2023 wildfires, the couple left to stay with their grown children, all of whom are on the continent.

“We didn’t want it to be commercial; we didn’t want it to be snatched up by a speculator,” said Kimball, who presented the Wahikuli property to LCLT. “We wanted it to be doing something good for the local people.”

The Lahaina Community Land Trust is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that was born in the fires’ aftermath to ensure that Lahaina’s lands remain forever in the hands of its people. As a community land trust, LCLT works to purchase and hold land with the purpose of permanently protecting Lahaina lands from volatile investment-driven real estate forces.

“This is the first step toward the LCLT vision of a significant portion of Lahaina’s real estate that is permanently protected from outside investor-interests,” said Mikey Burke, LCLT Board President. “With every parcel we protect, our Lahaina residents will no longer have to compete with outside wealth just to be able to stay home and raise their kids in the Lahaina we love so much.”

The purchase was made possible by an innovative partnership between LCLT and The Conservation Fund (TCF), a nonprofit that works nationwide to protect critical lands and waters to provide greater access to nature, strengthen local economies and enhance climate resiliency. TCF has been assisting LCLT since its formation to develop strategies for land acquisition.

Acting as the bridge to secure the land quickly on behalf of LCLT, The Conservation Fund signed the paperwork to secure the parcel on Aug. 8, 2024, exactly one year after thousands of Lahaina families lost their homes in the fire.

While the parcel was previously the site of the Kimball’s four-bedroom three-bathroom, county zoning allows for up to one main house and two ‘ohana units. The LCLT reports it’s the “perfect forever-home” for an extended or multigenerational Lahaina family.

“This is not the kind of work that land conservation nonprofits typically do” said Steve Hobbs, State Director for The Conservation Fund. “But TCF believes that conservation is a tool for improving people’s lives, and this was a perfect opportunity for us to do exactly that. We are honored to assist LCLT and the Lahaina community in healing the land and its people. We see this as just the first of many projects to integrate the conservation of Lahaina’s precious cultural and natural resources with the pressing needs of its people.”

Once construction is complete, a homeowner will be chosen through a lottery system currently being developed by LCLT and its advisory board of Maui Komohana community leaders, which embraces anti-displacement policies that protect longtime Lahaina residents. The project may also tap support from the County of Maui’s Affordable Housing Fund.

Kimball said that through a friend from church, he learned that community organizers were forming the land trust — to which Kimball quickly sought to reach out, since he started one decades earlier in California and was intimately familiar with community land trusts’ role in preserving affordable housing. He also knew in his heart that although the piece of land had become his home, he said “it never really belonged to us anyway.”

“Even as kama‘āina who loved Lahaina, we never had a true sense of belonging in Hawai‘i knowing how the islands were slowly, even covertly, taken from the Hawaiians and exploited by outside interests,” said Kimball. “LCLT is to be commended for its focus, clear vision and dedication toward achieving what would be the most beneficial for the community.”

Guided by the Lahaina community and advisors from Indigenous communities and other community land trust experts from across the continent, the LCLT developed a two-part strategy to keep Lahaina lands in Lahaina hands. The first is an insurance-gap funding program to help Lahaina residents who want to stay on their ‘āina but otherwise might not afford to do so. Meanwhile, LCLT has also begun to build the capacity to purchase properties and hold them in trust to be used how the community decides, such as for permanently affordable housing, conservation, cultural preservation or economic diversification.

Every dollar contributed to LCLT’s Lahaina Land Fund, for example, will be used solely to secure Lahaina lands that might be offered for sale, keeping them out of speculator hands and in the hands of the community, forever, according to a news release. LCLT reports that it is building solutions that prevent more generational Lahaina families from being displaced by rising real estate costs.

“The Kānaka ʻŌiwi understand intimately that a place and its people are one and the same. We understand that restoring Indigenous relationships to land and Indigenous values into economic systems is the most effective path to the systemic solutions needed in Lahaina and across the pae ʻāina to ensure we can retain, maintain, and restore people to place,” said Autumn Ness, LCLT Executive Director. “The land trust model is a powerful tool to restore those relationships, through collective stewardship of land that would likely otherwise end up in the hands of investors.”

Lahaina land owners who need financial help holding onto their properties or are interested in selling into community ownership can call Ness at 808-250-4200.