Should neighborhoods build more densely after Lahaina fire? This bill would allow it

Before he lost his house in the Lahaina fire, Jeremy Delos Reyes watched his neighbors turn their garage carport into the fourth bedroom of their home as they tried to fit more people in a limited space.

He estimated that there were 21 people were living there at one time, with 17 vehicles that were forced to park in front of four different houses.

So while Delos Reyes knows there’s a need for housing, especially after the August 2023 wildfire that destroyed much of his town, he’s worried about Lahaina building back with even denser neighborhoods.

That’s why he’s opposing a proposed bill that would allow people to build more homes on less space, which Maui County says would help address a housing crisis made worse after the fire. 

Bill 103, which the Maui County Council is currently considering, would allow one dwelling unit per 2,500 square feet of the lot area on Maui and Lāna‘i. That applies to all three residential zoning districts, which currently only allow one unit per 6,000 square feet in an R-1 district, one unit per 7,500 square feet in an R-2 district, and one unit per 10,000 square feet in an R-3 district. 

It means the number of units allowed on a lot could double in some areas. By zoning district, the limits would be: 

• R-1 (6,000 square feet): 2 dwelling units and 1 ‘ohana unit on Maui; 2 dwelling units on Lāna‘i and Moloka‘i.
• R-2 (7,500 square feet): 3 dwelling units and 2 ‘ohana units on Maui; 3 dwelling units and 1 ‘ohana unit on Lāna‘i and Moloka‘i.
• R-3 (10,000 square feet): 4 dwelling units and 2 ‘ohana units on Maui; 4 dwelling units and 1 ‘ohana unit on Lāna‘i and Moloka‘i.

Greg Pfost, administrative planning officer with the county, explained the bill to the council’s Disaster Recovery, International Affairs and Planning Committee last week. He said the bill came out of the Planning Department “to provide, hopefully, immediate assistance to Lahaina residents to help in their rebuilding efforts,” as well as expand housing and affordability countywide.

With the changes, Pfost said the county expects to see more units going up for rent and for sale. He also pointed out that because more units are allowed on lots, they would likely be smaller and thus more affordable. The biggest impacts would be on Maui, which has 18,110 residential lots, compared to 1,000 on Lāna‘i and 16 on Moloka‘i.

However, existing rules on setbacks, surfaces, parking, utilities and the fire code would still apply, which “will control the type and number of units a lot can support,” Pfost said.

He added that the bill would not allow for additional short-term rentals, because those are still restricted under the county’s community plans. 

Lahaina lost more than 2,200 structures in the August 2023 wildfire, including about 700 affordable housing units. Even before the fire, home construction was slowing — from 2018 to 2022, Maui and Kaua‘i counties saw a net loss of housing units, while Honolulu and Hawai‘i counties saw their housing stocks grow by thousands of units, according to the University of Hawai‘i Economic Research Organization’s 2024 Hawai‘i Housing Factbook.

Boosting the housing stock by building higher-density neighborhoods isn’t a new idea — it’s something that county planning documents have floated in the past. The West Maui Community Plan, for example, talks about supporting “missing middle housing types, which are multiunit or clustered housing types in scale with single-family homes, such as ‘ohana, duplex, triplex, fourplexes and so on,” Pfost explained.

Single-family homes have long dominated the market. From 2013 to 2023, multifamily homes never made up more than 20% of the hundreds of home building permits issued in Maui County each year, according to UHERO data.

Bill 103 is one of the many changes the county has been trying to make to speed up rebuilding in West Maui and increase housing. It also comes on the heels of a bill passed by the state Legislature last year requiring the counties to allow at least two ‘ohana units on all residentially zoned lots by 2026, which would force changes on Maui, Moloka‘i and Lāna‘i.

Jonathan Helton, policy researcher with the nonpartisan Grassroot Institute of Hawai‘i, believes Bill 103 could help widen the housing stock with smaller, more affordable units. And while there are concerns about overdevelopment, he said one way to protect more rural areas is to concentrate building in populated places.

“If you’re going to have more housing and you want to keep the country country, then you have to make the city and the areas that already have housing a little bit more dense,” Helton told the committee last week. “You have to make the city more city.”

Helton added that this type of approach to building housing would allow families “to build intergenerational wealth” by adding more homes on their lot that could be rented out or passed on to their children.

It’s part of the reason why Kai Nishiki, who chaired the West Maui Community Plan Advisory Committee during its latest update, is supportive of the bill. Nishiki told the committee that additional density “is the way of the future” and that it would legitimize what’s already happening in neighborhoods.

“These bills empower and enable our folks who own homes and want to be able to have all of their generations within that property and be able to pass that property down to two or three of their kids,” Nishiki said. “And so I think that we should just make sure that we can safeguard this from vacation rentals, speculators and of course have all of the public health and safety issues addressed.”

For other residents, public health and safety are the primary concerns of building more homes on less space. Delos Reyes is a former Lahainaluna High School teacher who lived in Wahikuli and has been helping people rebuild their homes after the fire. He said the 2023 disaster proved how quickly fire could jump from house to house and worried that building more densely packed neighborhoods would impact emergency access and quality of life. Delos Reyes said he understands the need for housing but that the county first needs to address the infrastructure issues in crowded neighborhoods like his.

If building more housing is the concern, he said, the county should force larger luxury developments to add more units on their properties.

“Why do we, the residents, all of you guys and your family, have to live like cockroaches, one on top each other, when our part-time residents get to live lavishly for two weeks out of the year on five-acre lots?” Delos Reyes asked the committee.

Maui County has made changes in the past that would allow for more homes on properties. In 2018, the council passed a bill allowing up to two ‘ohana units on lots of 7,500 square feet or more.

Kīhei resident Tom Croly remembers when the change took place, and he thinks it’s a cautionary tale for the current proposal. He said that some people weren’t able to build more ‘ohana units because their subdivisions didn’t have the infrastructure, “and I hate dangling the idea out to someone that they could do this only for them to find out later that their subdivision would not support what they’re asking to build here.”

“Before considering such a radical increase in residential density, you really need a more complete analysis from fire, water, wastewater, police, public works, traffic, and any other agency concerned with public safety on how this measure could impact their ability to provide service and safety to the residents of these new dwellings,” Croly told the committee.

Maui Police Department Sgt. Jan Pontanilla confirmed that any increase in development would require an assessment on traffic and calls for service to see if more personnel are needed in the area.

Maui Fire Department Captain Oliver Voss said that fire and planning officials have played out different scenarios, and that new changes to the fire code will address some of the density issues. He said the main concern is how roadways will be impacted if everybody takes the opportunity to double the number of houses on their lot. 

“But I think that is going to be a road we have to cross when we get to it, because we don’t know what neighborhoods are going to be built to that extension,” Voss said. “So for right now, we’re going to rely on the codes that are in place and the ones we just adopted and that should help maintain the protection for this kind of density increase.”

Voss agreed that traffic studies are needed to identify the neighborhoods that could see an increase in homes and cars and whether the roads could handle the growth or require additional lanes.

He pointed out that current codes require a second access point if there are more than 20 parcels in a neighborhood, but this was based on prior years when there might have only been two houses on a lot. If there’s the potential to have six houses on a lot, as Bill 103 allows, the code may need to be based on the number of dwellings, not parcels, he said.

The committee deferred the bill and expects to take it up again March 19.

All three planning commissions have recommended passage of the bill, though the Moloka‘i Planning Commission asked that the island be excluded unless an amendment was added to require additional homes to be affordable in perpetuity.