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For months Hawaii Gov. Josh Green has been threatening to issue a moratorium on Maui short-term rentals, but on Wednesday he said that will not be necessary as enough available units have been secured to house the remaining 3,109 fire survivors still living in 11 hotels.

He said there is still a shortage in West Maui though, noting how many prefer to stay close to work, schools and other places important to those impacted by the Aug. 8 blaze in Lahaina.

“So I’m going to continue to ask for people, if they have short-term rentals or other capacity to ,” he said during a press conference Wednesday on Oahu. “You will get a very good deal. You’ll get a lot of resources.”

Green said the problem of illegal vacation rentals is consuming too much of the housing inventory, saying it has to end. He has directed the Attorney General’s Office to create a task force to “seriously enforce the laws against the illegal rentals,” focusing for now on those in West Maui.

The governor even offered property owners who are not in compliance a plan of action: voluntarily rent the unit out for the next two years through the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the state, and then transition out by selling your property to a local family.

“That’s the best thing to do if you’re not in compliance right now,” he said.

And while there may be enough secured units for the fire survivors, including 1,330 through FEMA’s direct-lease program, it has been a slow process to move people into them, with the current number at about 598 households.

The April 10 deadline is fast approaching of when FEMA will stop reimbursing the state for this program. The state asked weeks ago for an extension, but FEMA said Wednesday the deadline is still in place.

Green said he does not expect all fire survivors to be out of the hotels until July 1. The state already has been paying for about 500 households living in them who are ineligible for FEMA assistance.

Now, about 25 to 30 people a day are moving out of the high-priced rooms with no ability to cook and into long-term housing, which in some cases are almost as pricey but have kitchens that eliminate the government funding of meals.

The cost of the state’s obligations for the wildfire recovery efforts has been a big concern of the Legislature. The Senate Ways and Means Committee on Feb. 29 was upset to learn it had more than doubled from the original projections.

But Green touted on Wednesday that the state’s finances are stable, with it being unnecessary to tap into the “rainy day” fund of $1.5 billion or cut essential services. He said the Council on Revenues projected about two weeks ago that 4% growth will be maintained  because “we’ve been steady on tourism.”

He listed about $220 million in projected emergency and housing costs that he thinks the state now will not be on the hook to pay. That includes $107 million for Maui fire debris removal (the 10% share of the $1 billion-plus cleanup that he expects FEMA will now mostly cover) and $30 million for hotel stays of displaced fire survivors who are citizens of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau under the Compacts of Free Association. This also is now being picked up by the federal government.

It also includes $40 million that the Hawaii Community Foundation has agreed to pay for the $115 million Kalailoa temporary group housing development of 450 modular homes in Lahaina.

Green said the state plans to pay for some of the added fire expenses — which likely will include building more temporary housing — by not making a $300 million extra payment into the Employees’ Retirement System fund as planned.

“We’ve gone through an enormous disaster,” Green said in defending his “general inclination” to go this direction. “We have to take care of our people. … That’s why I think it’s better to invest in our people rather than an extra payment on the ERS.”

He said he always has believed it is better to provide funding for wellness, drug treatment, housing and avoiding homelessness, “rather than often kicking it down the road.”

In 2020, then-Gov. David Ige used his emergency powers during the Covid-19 pandemic to defer making the legally required $388 million pre-payment for future health costs for public workers and retirees.

Green said he may either request an amendment on the floor of the Legislature, or simply allow the payment to lapse after the session.

In addition to the Kalailoa development, other interim housing includes the Kilohana temporary group site of 169 units being built by FEMA and 175 furnished guest rooms in the Haggai religious center in Kihei that used to be a hotel, which will be ready for move-in by May 1.

Some of the group sites will be ready for people to move into before July 1, Green said.

FEMA also has plans to potentially build at least one additional site, but Green has continually asked for the agency to build at least 1,000.

“We know it’s difficult for FEMA to justify large builds because they’re really supposed to be an emergency response entity, but we’re going to have to have at least 2,000 houses, so we can work with them and with (the Department of Housing and Urban Development) over time to build many more houses.”

The governor said he is pressing hard for these units because he’s worried that in two years, when federal resources start to dwindle, people in rentals won’t be able to afford them and will have nowhere else to go.

FEMA and the state also have rental assistance programs that are available to fire survivors. And the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement has a host housing program in West Maui that pays $500 per person.

This transitional interim housing is important because the rebuilding of homes in the Lahaina burn zone is not expected to begin until 2025 and take five to 10 years to fully build out.

Green said he wants to prioritize the 561 homes that were owned and lived in by local families, and that he believes “they’ll get permits to rebuild before the end of this year.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.