Temporary tiny homes to replace tents at homeless shelter near Kahului Airport

At the Pu‘uhonua o Nēnē shelter created in Kahului to house Lahaina fire survivors who had been homeless before the 2023 tragedy, the quickly installed military-grade tents are now deteriorating and will soon be replaced with temporary tiny homes.

Eventually, these temporary homes are expected to be converted into a kauhale, the name the State of Hawaiʻi has given to the tiny village communities it’s been working the last few years to build across the islands for unhoused people.

But the location of this kauhale on Maui has yet to be determined, according to the state Department of Human Services and the nonprofit HomeAid Hawai‘i, which plans to develop the tiny homes. 

HomeAid Hawai‘i Executive Director Kimo Carvalho said the original plan was to construct the kauhale on the same land as the shelter, which is at the busy corner of Hāna Highway and Mayor Elmer Carvalho Way near the Kahului Airport.

Earlier this month, the Nareit Foundation announced it had awarded a $150,000 grant to HomeAid Hawai‘i to develop a project called Kīpūola Kauhale, a community of 125 tiny homes with shared amenities on the site where Pu‘uhonua o Nēnē currently stands.

While that location was the intended site when HomeAid Hawai‘i applied for the grant around March 2024, Carvalho said the site owned by the state Department of Transportation has challenges with permanent sewer and water service. It also took three months to bring in permanent power.

“We’re working toward that, if that is a viable option,” Carvalho said. “If it’s not, then we are actively considering other sites.”

Neither the nonprofit nor the state could provide a specific location at this time.

A HomeAid Hawai‘i webpage for the project was taken down on Thursday because Carvalho said the information was outdated. He said the concept was floated to share with donors and investors, but that without a permanent site or final plans, the nonprofit couldn’t yet provide a timeline or cost. 

The transition from tents housing unrelated people to more private constructed homes is geared partly toward addressing criticism last year by former staff and residents who cited safety concerns in the wake of fights and multiple deaths on-site.

The tents that made up the shelter “were never intended to be long term,” said Joseph Campos, deputy director of the Department of Human Services. “We are transitioning to the small units to provide a hardened structure for people with individual spaces to help in their recovery,” he said.

HomeAid Hawai‘i stepped in last August to help site operator Project Vision Hawai‘i with managing the property and improving health and safety on-site.

“We are erecting physical structures for this very reason to support the State and Project Vision Hawaii through the duration of the operation until all tents have been decommissioned,” Carvalho said via email on Thursday.

He added that the tents have been worn down by “two storms, constant winds and heavy environmental conditions” and need to be replaced soon. 

No tiny homes have been built yet; the nonprofit is aiming for “several dozen,” but said it will depend on the need. The temporary tiny homes can also be relocated. 

“If it gets converted into a permanent kauhale, great, we’ll adjust to that,” Carvalho said. “We’re even thinking that way, just in case it does happen. But I live in a world where commitments, until it’s greenlit, it’s temporary.”

While Pu‘uhonua o Nēnē began as emergency shelter for Lahaina fire survivors who previously were unhoused, it is now is open to anyone currently unhoused. HomeAid said there were 120 people living at the shelter when they first stepped in, and now there are just over 80. Only 20 of those came from Red Cross hotel shelters, according to Campos.

The goal is to get as many people as possible into permanent housing while “decommissioning” the tents, which “is going to last at least through the year,” Carvalho said.

And while that’s the current focus, Carvalho said the more permanent goal is to have a kauhale somewhere in Central Maui as well as in West Maui.

Inspired by the history of communal living spaces in Hawaiian culture, the state’s Kauhale Initiative aims to create a different type of housing option for unhoused residents. The state’s modern version of a kauhale includes small, low-cost housing units with shared spaces for cooking and eating, recreation, growing food or engaging in other activities. 

In a Jan. 13 presentation to state lawmakers, Gov. Josh Green reported that 16 total kauhale had been completed to date and that 10 more were in the pipeline for 2025. He expected there to be 30 operational kauhale by 2026 and asked for $50 million in each of the next two fiscal years to support kauhale projects.

HomeAid Hawai‘i has been the developer of several kauhale sites, with five on O‘ahu so far. Carvalho said two sites on Hawai‘i island and two sites on Kaua‘i have also been identified as “strong potential” locations, while at least two sites are being scouted on Maui.

In the meantime, HomeAid has been trying to address concerns raised by Pu‘uhonua o Nēnē residents and former staff, who have cited substance abuse and deaths on-site, understaffing, and fights that they say were not policed unless someone was injured. 

Darrah “Makana” Kauhane, executive director of Project Vision Hawai‘i, confirmed at a Maui County Council committee meeting in June that there had been three deaths on-site but did not provide additional details because of privacy laws. In August, the Maui Police Department told Hawai’i News Now that there had been six deaths since Oct. 1, 2023.

Carvalho said since HomeAid came on board, its security contractor has conducted day and night patrols to account for sheltered and unsheltered people in the area and talked to businesses about crimes in the area. He said they’ve often stopped people from slipping drugs into the site, and have also worked to clean up trash.

“There are definitely issues, but we keep maintaining the peace and the safety, and we make sure that there’s consequences to actions,” Carvalho said. 

When asked about health and safety concerns at the site, Bob Wardlaw, the director of housing for Project Vision Hawai‘i who has been involved with the site since it opened, referred questions to the state, explaining he was not authorized to speak on the issue.  

So far, Pu‘uhonua o Nēnē has cost the state about $8.2 million from Sept. 15, 2023 to Feb. 10. That includes $6.8 million for property management and wraparound services and nearly $1.4 million for site work and shelters, according to the Department of Human Services.

Local advocates who work with houseless communities on Maui say they hope operations will improve at the site and that the state will be more transparent with community groups.

Scott Hansen, executive director of Maui Rescue Mission, was one of the many volunteers who helped set up the tents when the shelter first opened. His nonprofit visits the shelter every Wednesday to gather up to 30 individual loads and take them to the Kahului Laundromat to wash. 

Hansen has been frustrated by the lack of communication with the shelter management. He said many good staff at the shelter as well as outside providers who were involved from the start have been pushed out and treated like “outsiders” whose opinions weren’t heeded.

He thinks a kauhale is a much better option but worries about how it will be run given the problems at the current site. 

“Whoever is running and operating it needs to be willing to work with the community, to allow the resources to come in, to allow the nonprofits that want to help to help, and to break down any barriers to doing that,” Hansen said. “I think that’s where they went wrong, because they have a lot of really, really good people that were gung-ho about it and willing to sacrifice time and energy … but then they just kind of were like no, we’re doing that, and you know, that’s it.”

Lisa Darcy, who runs the organization Share Your Mana and is on the board of directors of the Hawai‘i Public Housing Authority, also agreed that a kauhale with individual units would be a much better alternative to putting strangers “with really significant stressors in their life” together in a tent on a site that’s not close to public transportation or facilities. She said it would give people a chance to live in stable housing, get to know their neighbors and be more invested in their community.

Darcy also felt there had been a lack of transparency with the community and “conflicting reports” from departments on future plans for the site. She wanted to see a public meeting with the input and involvement of groups who regularly work with unhoused residents on island.

“You don’t do anything in silence on Maui, and the trust was already broken, and so if they are not doing community discussions, and getting community input, and really pounding the pavement here … it just seems doomed all over again,” Darcy said.

Carvalho said “we’re doing as much as we can” to be transparent and inclusive, and that they have gone to Maui Homeless Alliance meetings to explain their plans.

“We understand the county needs homeless solutions, but that is not what the site was meant to do,” Carvalho said. “And everyone’s looking to kauhale and I get that. But until we have a site, we can’t talk about the site, and the site really determines what’s possible and not possible.”

Last year, Maui County saw a decline in the number of people experiencing homelessness, from 704 in 2023 to 654 in 2024, according to a point-in-time count conducted every January in counties across the country. However, that didn’t account for the thousands of people displaced from the 2023 wildfires — last year’s survey noted that in January 2024, there were 5,245 people in noncongregate emergency shelters opened by the Red Cross in local hotels.

The number of people who were homeless but sheltered increased by 16% from 2023 to 2024. The point-in-time count report noted that this was likely because the creation of Pu‘uhonua o Nēnē offset the loss in the fire of Ka Hale A Ke Ola Homeless Resource Center’s west side shelter.