Over the past few years, Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen and Maui County Council Vice Chair Yuki Lei Sugimura have been on opposite sides of several high-profile issues.

When Bissen proposed a bill to phase out thousands of short-term rentals to quickly create more housing post-fire, Sugimura voted against the measure due to concerns about its economic impacts.

When Bissen floated the county’s plans to buy private water company systems, Sugimura voiced reservations using public funds to buy aging infrastructure. 

But as the two finalists for mayor head to the general election on Nov. 3, just 15 days away, they agree on one major issue. Both say they do not want to see people move away from Maui County because they can no longer afford a home in the islands, especially after the 2023 wildfires destroyed many homes and led to inflated home prices.

“We had no idea that the fires would have the dramatic effect it had on hemorrhaging some of the people that were longtime families living here,” Bissen told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative last week. “If we could get them to come back, that would be … a success.”

Sugimura thinks the county isn’t doing enough to address the economic struggles of everyday people and make it easier for them to stay in the islands.

“Cost of living is so challenging, and we have families who are moving away because we’re not doing a good job,” Sugimura told HJI last week.

After the back-to-back blows of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fire, Maui’s economy is still recovering, with tourism, the island’s main economic driver, improved but still not at pre-fire levels.

Many families still grapple with everyday costs. More than half of Maui County households were living below the ALICE threshold (which stands for “asset-limited, income-constrained, employed” and refers to residents who work but still struggle with cost of living), according to the latest Aloha United Way report in 2024. The median sales price for a single-family home on Maui in September has fallen 11% since a year ago, but is still well over $1 million.

Both Bissen and Sugimura see their policies as the solution, pointing out that they’ve worked to make affordable housing a reality during their time in office. 

Bissen, who is finishing his first four-year term as mayor, has noted that the county averaged less than 100 affordable homes per year before he took office. Since 2023, the county has averaged 293 affordable homes per year, a 190% increase.

Sugimura says that in a decade on the council, she’s approved about 6,700 housing units, including big developments like the 301-unit Kaiahale ‘O Kahiluhilu and the 266-unit Liloa Hale senior housing project. 

When the 2023 wildfire destroyed most of the housing in Lahaina town, Bissen made one of the most consequential moves of his first term, proposing a bill that would eliminate about 7,000 thousand vacation rentals in apartment districts. The goal was to quickly open up more housing for local families, with Bissen pointing out the vast majority of the affected units were owned by people living off island. 

In a debate on PBS Insights last month, Bissen said if the county could get a few thousand more homes because of the bill, “that will help us keep our people home. It’s a direct link.”

“You cannot say that you are for local folks and local housing and oppose Bill 9,” Bissen said.

Sugimura voted against the measure when it came to council, saying the way to create housing was not to take uses away from property owners, including local owners who relied on short-term rentals for income. She also worried that the tens of millions of lost tax revenue would worsen a tourism-dependent economy still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and the fire. 

In the PBS debate, Sugimura said in response to Bissen that she believed in “housing for everyone.”

“Bill 9 did not solve a housing solution,” she said. “Bill 9 pits one group against another with no benefits for that.”

The council is currently considering changing over half of the more than 6,000 units now affected by the bill from apartment to hotel zoning to allow them to continue as short term rentals.

Despite their differences on Bill 9, both candidates told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative that they believed the key to increasing the construction of affordable housing and decreasing the cost was by investing in infrastructure like roads and wastewater services on county-owned land.

Sugimura said if elected, one of her priorities in the first 100 days would be to look at increasing public-private partnerships to help build out more infrastructure for future housing projects. She also would examine the permitting system to see how the county can cut down on the average of 379 days that it takes to issue standard building permits, saying: “Time is money.”

“The County of Maui is becoming — or maybe it always has been — a county of ‘no.’ I want it to be a county of ‘yes,’” she told HJI. “We want to help people move forward, and we want our economy to be stronger.”

Bissen said increasing housing would also be a priority early in a second term. He said the county is already working to build housing and infrastructure on county-owned land, and “we’re going to move to accelerate that.” 

“Housing is an everyday push and an everyday focus,” he told HJI. “It’s not a once-in-awhile. It’s not a campaign slogan.”

He said purchasing water systems also would be a priority of his first 100 days in office, given that infrastructure and water are foundational to building housing. 

“I would absolutely try to lock down purchasing water systems, whether it’s Wailuku Water Company or whether it’s Maui Land and Pineapple,” he said. “I think that would be a big plus and a big win for the community if we could start to do that.”

The purchase of private water systems, which for decades served the island’s now defunct sugar plantations, has been a major objective for Bissen over the past year. The county recently reached a tentative agreement with Maui Land & Pineapple to acquire their West Maui water system and is working toward the purchases of other systems. Bissen says the county’s Department of Water Supply staffing far outweighs the small teams that maintain these sprawling systems and can handle the additional work. 

While Sugimura sees benefits to the county having control over the water system and fees, she has hesitations about purchasing these massive systems, expressing concerns about the aging infrastructure and the cost of government taking on the task, especially because the onus will then be on the county to maintain the systems and keep service going.

“Who has to pay for it in the end is the taxpayer,” she said. “So the more that we can be cautious is the position that I will take. One thing is to buy, and the other thing is to actually take care of operations and actually maintain it for eternity.”

As it seeks to increase housing, the Bissen administration also has grappled with an ongoing homelessness crisis. Last year, county and state officials forced unhoused residents to leave multiple encampments in Central and West Maui, citing concerns over fire risk with abandoned vehicles and belongings piling up near open fields of brush. But the affected people and activists supporting them have criticized what they see as repeated sweeps and the Bissen administration describes as cleanups, saying it’s simply pushing houseless people around the island with few places to go. 

Pūlehu and Hansen roads have recently become the latest sites where houseless community members have sought shelter with a growing encampment of cars, tents and belongings lining the road shoulders. Sugimura called on the county administration last month to respond to “serious public safety concerns.” 

Bissen said the county is finally moving toward launching a safe parking program that was passed in 2022 shortly before he was elected and would create a place for houseless residents to legally park overnight. Bissen said flooding issues at the proposed site delayed the program’s rollout, but the program will be launching soon in Pū‘unēnē. 

“For us, it’s balancing that accountability with the compassion,” he said. “Obviously, people are entitled to have dignity in a place to stay, a place to live. But the public is also entitled to safe streets, safe parks, safe roads.”

Sugimura said she wants to find longer-term fixes for homelessness and public safety than repeatedly forcing people out of growing encampments. She didn’t say that her administration would avoid doing the same thing but saw it as a “last resort.” She said safe parking was a good start but is still “a temporary solution. It’s like kicking the can down the road.”

She said the greater problems with homelessness is really finding solutions to meet people’s critical needs, including housing, so they “can live a better life.”

Sugimura and Bissen both have ideas for how they would improve the economic situation for all Maui County residents. 

Both candidates said they are committed to advancing commercial rebuilding in Lahaina, which the Bissen administration had put on the back burner to prioritize the rebuilding of people’s homes. Just last week, construction began on the first commercial property on Front Street to be rebuilt.

Bissen said he planned to make the commercial rebuilding one of the priorities of his first 100 days in office, though Sugimura said the county has waited too long to bring businesses back.

Both see tourism as essential to the economy but agree that diversification is needed. During their PBS debate, Bissen suggested workforce development and growth in industries like health care, technology and construction, and noted that the county has invested $75 million into programs that could help keep young people on Maui advance in their careers. 

On PBS, Sugimura pointed to her experience working with county and federal leaders to help revitalize Wailuku as an example of what she could do to bring economic growth to Maui’s small towns. Sugimura told HJI that she also sees opportunities for more jobs if the county increases construction of infrastructure for housing projects.

Sugimura also thinks the county could ease pressure on residents by adjusting tax rates. She believes the carryover savings the county sees every year are evidence that they’re charging too much in taxes and not using funding for projects in a timely manner. Sugimura, who chairs the council’s budget committee, believes the budget has grown too “inflated” in recent years, and said that if elected mayor, she will see what can be done to cut it back. 

Bissen pointed out that as budget chair, Sugimura “plays a central role in determining how the County spends taxpayer dollars” and already has the power to propose reductions. However, in two of the last four years, the council adopted budgets higher than the mayor’s original proposal and did not make major changes in the other two years.

He added that it was “misleading to suggest that carryover savings are primarily the result of unfinished projects or poor fiscal management.” He said about “60% of these savings comes from revenues exceeding projections, including investment earnings and grant reimbursements, rather than delayed or incomplete projects.” They can also come from better negotiated prices with vendors and contractors, projects completed in a more cost-effective way and outside funding sources. 

Sugimura said that while she is the budget chair, she is only one of nine votes on the council when it comes to approving the budget. As mayor, she would have the power to put forward her own proposals and oversee spending on the administration side. She added that at times the council did not cut the budget because it believed the projects were needed, especially after the fire.

“We can do better as a community to help the people of Maui County,” Sugimura said. “If we can look at these things that I just mentioned, then we’re going ot help the families that are struggling out there.”

Bissen said he planned to “focus on doing whatever we can, whatever it takes” to help people stay in the islands.

“It’s going to be housing. It’s going to be jobs,” he said. “Those are going to be the things … that we are going to focus on for people being able to stay here and make a living here.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of two stories looking at the stakes and the issues shaping the Maui County mayor’s race. Saturday’s story featured the “October surprise” — allegations made by the police chief against incumbent Richard Bissen and how both candidates view the ongoing fire recovery.