After losing her home in the August 2023 Lahaina wildfire, Happy Nicolas and her family bounced between Kā‘anapali and Kīhei before landing last October in federal emergency housing in Lahaina. 

“We are still struggling, looking for an affordable house,” Nicolas said. “For now it’s affordable (with FEMA), but I don’t know if they’re going to raise the rent. So that’s why we’re so worried again.”

Nicolas and her family are among the many displaced Lahaina families who have finally settled in stable housing three years after the disaster but still worry about their next steps as the recovery and rebuilding continue. 

A report released by the University of Hawai‘i’s Economic Research Organization on Tuesday found that housing stability among displaced fire survivors surveyed by UHERO has improved over the past year. About two-thirds of households affected by the fires now live in permanent housing, an increase from just over half in early 2025.

Families also are moving far less than they did in the first two years. For households still in temporary arrangements, the share of those who have been at the same address for more than a year has tripled to almost two-thirds. 

“However, overall rates of temporary and unstable housing remain elevated,” UHERO said. 

Displacement also has “declined modestly,” with about one in six people returning to West Maui but not yet to their home, according to the report. 

And, while more people are finding housing and rent has gone down for smaller properties, survivors also are grappling with the pressure of declining aid. The amount of households receiving full rental assistance (paying less than $100 per month in rent) has gone down from 37% in January 2025 to 15% in May 2026. About half of fire-affected people received no assistance at all in April and May.

“Some of that likely reflects families regaining stability, but the scale of that drop suggests that assistance may also be falling away for some people who still need it,” research economist and report co-author Daniela Bond-Smith said Tuesday.

They’re also facing an economy that has yet to fully recover since the fires. Unemployment has fallen from 10% to 8%, but not everyone has gone back to work. The report found that 42% of fire-affected people work full-time, down from 62% before the fires. Exits from the labor market by people retiring or no longer seeking work have risen from 26% to 30%. 

“There are barriers other than the labor market and the economy,” Bond-Smith said. “Barriers could be related to health. They could be related to lack of support getting people connected to the labor market again. There are complex issues in play.”

UHERO’s data came from 563 respondents from January 2025 to May 2026, and the survey was weighted “to reflect the fire-affected population as a whole,” Bond-Smith said. Since the fires, the organization has worked with the Hawai‘i Community Foundation to survey people who lived, worked or owned a business in West Maui or Kula at the time of the disaster. Nearly 1,000 people have participated so far. 

But while the survey shows improvements, some say the reality in the community is less rosy. 

Autumn Ness, executive director of the Lahaina Community Land Trust that has been working to protect burned Lahaina properties from off-island buyers and help families afford to stay in Lahaina, said that survivors are still struggling to find stable housing. 

Even with the many “super well-intentioned programs,” such as the Ho‘okumu Hou initiative launched by Maui County with federal funds to help people rebuild or buy a home, Ness said it’s tough to find a place to live in Lahaina or anywhere else on Maui.

Fire survivors who were thrilled to receive $600,000 to help them buy a home for the first time — “the best news they’ve ever gotten in their life” — are running into a market where the median price of a single-family home surpassed $1.4 million earlier this year.  

“The market right now is not built to work for any of our people,” Ness said. 

The land trust staff have seen these problems firsthand as they watch rebuilt residential and empty commercial properties go up for sale for much more than they were worth before the fire. The nonprofit is receiving $6 million from the county in the current budget to support its mission of buying properties from residents who want to sell but want their land to stay in local hands.

More homes are being rebuilt, and aid is still out there, but Ness still worries more people won’t be able to afford to stay. Many are facing a deadline to make a move — Ka La‘i Ola, the state’s temporary modular home project, will serve families through 2029, but Kilohana, the federal government’s temporary development, is set to end in February.

“We’re never going to move fast enough to meet the real-life demands of people’s daily lives and their family needs,” Ness said. “It kills me that no matter how fast we’re all working, it’s just not fast enough.”

Overall, most households are still poorer than they were before the fire, with little changes to income levels since last year, according to UHERO. 

Bond-Smith said Maui’s economy has seen more economic growth in local services and other sectors than in the still-recovering tourism industry, where real visitor spending is still nearly 20% below pre-fire levels in the first quarter of the year. Of the people employed by the visitor industry before the fires, 65% still work in it, down slightly from nearly 67% last year. The number of people employed in other industries has also dipped slightly. 

Maui Chamber of Commerce President Pam Tumpap said the island was boosted by a busy summer season. In June, the latest data available, there were 229,197 visitors to Maui, a slight increase from June of last year but still 83% of the 276,136 visitors seen in June 2023 before the fire. 

Visitors spent a total of $516.4 million in June, slightly better than the same time last year but still about 83% of the $619.4 million spent on island in June 2023. 

Maui, the second-most visited island after O‘ahu, continued to lead all Neighbor Islands in visitors and spending.

But with the economy still not quite at pre-fire levels, Tumpap said she still hears from businesses that they are dealing with the aftermath of both the fires and the Kona low flooding in March. Some still owe loans from both the pandemic and the fire and are facing higher rents, reduced customer bases and two shipping rate increases in the first half of the year. 

“We’re still hearing that it’s slow, and it’s better than it has been, right?” Tumpap said. “We’re in a higher season. … But people are still struggling.”

Tumpap said it’s a reminder that Hawai‘i needs to cultivate a more “business-friendly climate” with support for small businesses, more efficient permitting and a more diversified, resilient economy. And, most importantly, she said, the economy can’t succeed without housing.

“We’re all about a strong economy because we understand that a strong economy gives us all opportunities for resiliency and sustainability,” she said. “But when we don’t have housing, we don’t have that.”