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On the menu Thursday night was a choice of beef or chicken fajitas for the Aug. 8 wildfire survivors being housed at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa in Kaanapali.

Dinner is now the only meal being provided to the approximately 1,254 displaced adults and children still living in hotel rooms in West Maui through the emergency housing program.

While the American Red Cross runs the program through a $500 million contract with the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, it was the state’s decision to eliminate breakfast and lunch as of April 15, said HIEMA Administrator James Barros.

Two months ago, the Federal Emergency Management Agency stopped reimbursing the state for meals served as part of the temporary housing program.

At that time, the state eliminated breakfast, lunch and dinner for survivors in the program who were placed in condos with kitchens. But Barros said the state decided it was important to continue providing three meals a day for people living in hotel rooms who could not cook.

Now, Barros said, the state is focusing its resources on the meal where it saw the highest number of people participating. He also pointed out that restaurants and stores are open for the survivors to have breakfast and lunch.

But several fire survivors say there are no affordable places to eat in Lahaina.

“It’s a tourist town,” said Christine Borge, whose apartment burned in the fire. And, she added, “We can’t cook in our room because if you do, you get evicted.”

The current date that FEMA will stop reimbursing the state for housing of eligible people in the hotels is only three weeks away, on May 10. The state is already covering the cost for about 200 households not eligible for FEMA assistance who are still in the program. Gov. Josh Green has said he expects everyone to be out of hotels by July 1.

At the peak of the temporary housing program, about 8,000 people were receiving meals, at a cost of at least $4 million a month, Barros said.

However, it’s a small amount when compared to the hundreds of millions being spent on rooms. The deal with the Red Cross, which includes other services, was at one point costing $1,000 per day per family for people staying in the hotels. The state has yet to provide a breakdown of those costs.

There are now 2,200 people from 857 households living in 10 hotels or condos who need to transition into more permanent housing.

For now, the elimination of two meals a day is causing anxiety for some survivors.

The to students at the four Lahaina schools, but it does not cover those meals on the weekends and non-school days.

Joy Newman, a 71-year-old who has been undergoing cancer treatments while living in the hotel, said it has been difficult because even when three meals a day were provided, the food often did not address her special dietary needs.

She was able to get a microwave when many others could not, but usually uses it only to heat coffee.

On Wednesday, she got good news that a one-bedroom condo in West Maui would accommodate her special needs: She uses a walker and has a dog.

She signed the direct-lease contract and is excited to move out of the hotel and into a place where she can cook.

Borge, who works at a store in the Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club in Kaanapali, says she tries to eat only half of her dinner and save the other half for the following day’s lunch.

In February, HIEMA tried to find community help for feeding the survivors in hotels but was unsuccessful. The state requested that FEMA continue to make the meals a reimbursable part of the program —something the federal agency said was unnecessary because restaurants and convenience stores had reopened, Barros said. FEMA did not respond Friday to a request for comment.

“On the state side, we’re still committed to provide that dinner meal because of the importance of the community coming together to eat,” Barros said.

He added that at breakfast, most people are “rushing out to get the day started” and the number of people who ate lunch was low. To date, the Red Cross has provided almost 1.5 million meals. On Wednesday, it served 985 dinners at six locations.

Survivors were notified on April 9 of the change and the Red Cross said its personnel have had at least two conversations with every household and have been working on a case-by-case basis to help with food needs.

The Red Cross has provided a grant to help the Maui Food Bank establish a market-style food hub in Lahaina. It is scheduled to be operational by the end of May or early June. The grant also provides funding for a mobile food pantry that will support Lahaina residents through the multiyear recovery process, the Red Cross said.

Borge said she plans to go to a food hub in West Maui. While most of the available items do her no good because she can’t cook, she is hoping to bring back peanut butter, bread and maybe tuna.

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