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FEMA’s Plan For Maui Wildfire Survivors Lacked Safeguards For Residents

FEMA officials said they didn’t want their housing program for survivors of Maui’s 2023 wildfires to displace any residents. But they didn’t bar the agency’s contractors from leasing properties previously occupied by long-term tenants.

ByNick Grube/ November 27, 2024

(George Wylesol, special to ProPublica)

When the federal government stepped in to rent housing for survivors of the devastating 2023 fires on Maui, officials said they didn’t want to drive up rental rates or in order to secure lucrative government contracts.

On paper, the plan sounded good: It would rely on finding empty vacation rentals and second homes, which was consistent with Federal Emergency Management Agency policy.

But new reporting shows that FEMA didn’t take basic steps to ensure that happened: When the agency inked contracts with private companies to identify homes they could rent for survivors, it didn’t prohibit them from signing up properties that had been occupied by long-term residents.

Without such safeguards, and with FEMA offering rates well above what residents typically paid each month in rent, some landlords kicked out tenants and housed wildfire survivors for more money. Local economists warned that rents could rise across the small island and that Maui’s housing crisis could intensify — and both have come to pass, Civil Beat and ProPublica found.

A , commissioned by FEMA itself, found that median rent rose 44% from early 2023 to June 2024. Though researchers concluded that was primarily due to the loss of so much housing in the fires, they said anecdotal evidence and hundreds of complaints to state agencies indicated that “” in response to FEMA’s high prices, leading to increased rents and displacement.

Reporting by Civil Beat and ProPublica corroborates the researchers’ conclusion. Tenants, housing advocates, government officials and property owners have said that landlords have jacked up rents and that residents have been displaced by wildfire survivors or others who will pay more.

“It seemed pretty clear they were setting up a bounty system for removing long-term residents,” said Justin Tyndall, an associate professor at the University of Hawaii who co-wrote a . “If you could just find a way to get your tenant to leave, then you would be eligible for these enormous rents from FEMA. So it’s unsurprising that people would find creative ways to try to tap into that money.”

When it launched the program, the agency did instruct potential contractors to lease units “.” David Greenberg, the head of Parliament LLC, one of the companies FEMA hired, said in an email that the agency made it clear that , even if the company didn’t know about it, would cause Parliament to lose its contract. He said his employees sought out properties advertised as vacation rentals and were instructed to “explicitly ask owners and property managers if there were any existing tenants.”

FEMA officials told Civil Beat and ProPublica that the 1,362 properties in the agency’s housing program were primarily vacation rentals and second homes, though they didn’t know exactly how many. They also said FEMA’s policy allows for flexibility; because housing on the island was limited and their program couldn’t meet survivors’ needs with vacation rentals alone, the agency allowed any property owner to sign up as long as the home was safe and ready for move-in.

One nonprofit that also leased properties was more proactive in trying to prevent profiteering by landlords. The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a prominent local nonprofit, ran the only nongovernmental leasing program after the fires. On the for its program, property owners had to attest that they were not evicting anyone in order to house survivors. They had to say what type of rental property they had and whether it was furnished. And if a landlord said a property was a short-term rental, staff tried to verify that through property tax records or Airbnb listings.

The online application for the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement’s housing program told property owners they couldn’t evict anyone in order to house a wildfire survivor and required them to check a box promising they weren’t doing so. (Obtained by ������Ƶ and ProPublica. Highlighted by ProPublica.)

Additionally, if a landlord said a property was a long-term rental — the type of property FEMA hoped to avoid — CNHA requested prior leases and the names of previous tenants so staff could make sure no one had been pushed out, according to Skye Kolealani Razon-Olds, who oversees the nonprofit’s emergency housing and recovery efforts. When the nonprofit did lease long-term rentals, it offered lower rates than for vacation rentals. By contrast, FEMA said it generally set its rates to be competitive with what tourists typically paid.

“We knew the areas that were typically used for short-term rentals, we had deeper conversations with folks, and we were willing to say no,” Razon-Olds said. “Most of the stuff that we went for was short-term rental, so we knew that we weren’t going to be moving somebody.”

Bob Fenton, the FEMA regional administrator in charge of disaster relief after the fires, acknowledged that the agency didn’t require contractors to avoid long-term rentals. “It’s not like we put in the contract: must be in the vacation rental market,” he said. He said he wasn’t aware of FEMA’s contractors taking the steps that CNHA did but added that the agency is open to suggestions on how to improve the program. “Those are all ideas, recommendations, lessons learned that we’ll take into account as we continue to operate here,” he said.

In practice, it largely fell to FEMA’s contractors to ensure that their efforts to secure housing didn’t lead landlords to force people out. Greenberg, the head of Parliament, said his company refused to work with several landlords who were trying to evict current tenants. “If we caught even a whiff of impropriety, we would move on to the next unit.”

However, the that the company created for property owners didn’t ask anything about tenants or what type of rental it was — just the address, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, when it would be available and additional information such as whether pets were allowed or if it was accessible for people with disabilities.

In response to allegations that companies like his were more focused on speed than vetting properties, Greenberg said, “I am proud of the balance we upheld in ensuring that all of our properties were compliant, owners were treated with respect, and the survivors living in our units were received with dignity.” He didn’t answer a question about whether his employees inquired about prior tenants.

Fenton acknowledged that the agency wouldn’t normally know if someone had been forced out before its contractor leased a unit. In “fewer than 10” cases, Fenton said, it learned that a landlord had improperly terminated a tenant’s lease in order to participate in FEMA’s program. It kicked those properties out.

Parliament was one of three companies hired by FEMA to manage properties; representatives of the other two, Lima Charlie Inc. and Aesthetic Home Investments, did not respond to questions from Civil Beat and ProPublica.

Two landlords who had rented to long-term tenants before the fires told Civil Beat and ProPublica that FEMA’s contractors spent little time vetting their properties. Hank Rapoza, a Maui-based real estate agent, said he contacted Parliament in December or January about leasing his two-bedroom condo in Wailea. He said a representative asked if the unit was vacant and didn’t inquire further when he said it was. The company offered him $7,500 a month, far more than the $3,500 he had charged before.

“The $7,500 was more than fair, so I said I’ll take it,” Rapoza said. “After I said that, I had a lease sent to me in three hours that I signed. That’s how fast they were.”

Steven Clark, the other landlord, said signing up for the program was remarkably easy. After the fires he listed a newly renovated three-bedroom home in Makawao, asking $4,000 a month. In November, he said, he was eating tacos from a food truck in Kahului when a representative of Lima Charlie called and offered him $8,000 a month. Clark said no one asked about previous tenants; the representative just wanted to know if the place was empty. Clark said it was. “They took me at my word,” Clark said. They struck a deal before he finished his lunch.

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