Volunteers from Kahului Walmart and Walmart’s Hawaiʻi Market Office helped assemble 1,225 food boxes at the Maui Food Bank last week.  It’s part of an ongoing program for Lahaina’s Filipino community by Kaibigan ng Lahaina and supported by the American Red Cross.

A resurgent construction industry in Hawaiʻi is building the state’s economy, even as tourism falters, and offers hope of boosting Maui’s recovery from the devastating August 2023 wildfires. This optimistic outlook comes from the Hawaiʻi state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism’s recent second-quarter statistical and economic report. “The growth in the construction industry […]

Residents are encouraged to attend the County of Maui’s Lahaina Community Meeting at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 4, at the Lahaina Intermediate School cafeteria.

The state Department of Education held a blessing and groundbreaking ceremony Thursday morning for a $20 million rental housing development for educators and school staff in Lahaina. The project addresses a critical workforce housing shortage and supports efforts to stabilize and retain staff at West Maui schools following the August 2023 wildfires.

The County of Maui Office of Recovery, Lahaina Filipino fire survivors and community members gathered to celebrate the official launch of the Lahaina Filipino Fire Survivors Association on Tuesday. LFFSA, an initiative of the Hawaiʻi Workers Center, is a grassroots organization of directly impacted worker leaders organizing for a long term recovery that addresses the most crucial needs of Lahaina’s Filipino fire survivors in the aftermath of the 2023 wildfires.

In partnership with cultural organizations, local schools and community businesses, the foundation will open a new Lahaina History Museum. 

State lawmakers passed legislation aimed at accelerating Maui’s wildfire recovery and approving a 60-day “shot clock” for counties to review building permits, a chronic cause of delaying construction projects in Hawaiʻi. Those were a couple of takeaways from a May 16 Grassroot Institute of Hawaii legislative wrap-up event titled “What went down at the Capitol […]

US Sen. Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) joined in introducing a bipartisan, bicameral resolution designating May as “National Wildfire Preparedness Month.” The introduction of this resolution comes as recovery efforts continue following the devastating Lahaina wildfires in 2023 and the Los Angeles fires earlier this year.

Beginning Saturday, May 24, 2025, access to the shoreline on the north and south ends of Lahaina Harbor will be made available for recreational, noncommercial purposes, the County of Maui Office of Recovery announced.

In actuality, the typical household can comfortably afford a $379,000 house. But in 2024, there were zero homes sold within that price range, and only a half dozen single-family transactions under $500,000, according to the LCLT report.

The Hawaiʻi Community Foundation, through its Maui Strong Fund, has committed up to $8 million to help restore a vital emergency shelter and affordable housing facility in Lahaina, closing a critical funding gap for Ka Hale A Ke Ola Homeless Resource Centers Inc., one of the island’s longest-standing service providers for Maui’s unhoused.

The transport of nonhazardous Lahaina wildfire debris from the Temporary Debris Storage Site in Olowalu to the Permanent Disposal Site at the Central Maui Landfill in Puʻunēnē will begin in early June.

Wildfire debris transfer, HECO updates, and financial counseling from Hale Mahaolu are among topics to be discussed.

Hawaiʻi-based roaster Lion Coffee has launched a new 100% Maui Coffee made exclusively with beans from Mahi Pono Farms in Kahului.

The deadly Maui wildfire disaster displaced 5,000 people and has now left Hawaiʻi with the dubious distinction of having the nation’s highest rate of homelessness, according to a report released today by the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization. The UHERO report also underscores that the wildfires aggravated Maui County’s already acute shortage of housing. […]

Denise Nussbaum will share information about how Aloha Ranch and local community partners have addressed the needs of Lahaina fire survivor communities. 

Lahaina owner-occupant homeowners are encouraged to register now for an online briefing on how to receive property surveys through the Lahaina Homeowner Recovery Program. Those who owned and lived on their Lahaina properties at the time of the August 2023 wildfire and need a property survey to move forward with home rebuilds are encouraged to register for the Zoom meeting on Wednesday, May 21, 5:30–6:30 p.m. 

Maui County taxpayers spent $240,000 for a “homeless strategic plan,” but that’s not what they got. On Monday, officials told Maui County Council members that the county’s all-hands-on-deck response to the devastating August 2023 wildfires made creating that plan “infeasible,” leading instead to a “community-informed report” titled “Recommendations to Address Homelessness in Maui County.” Now, […]

The organization announced Tuesday that it has awarded more than $21,000 in total to seven Kula residents, with each receiving up to $3,000 to help cover rebuilding costs not addressed by insurance or government programs.

Bank of Hawaiʻi marked the grand opening of its new Lahaina Branch on Maui on Monday with a private blessing ceremony and a donation of $100,000 to provide support to Lahaina residents who are at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure. Its previous location on Papalaua Street was destroyed in the 2023 wildfires.