KAHULUI, Hawaii — On a Monday morning in July, 11 months after the devastating fires in LahainaThe Kako’o Maui Resource Center was still busy.
Sunlight streamed through large windows. A young man with a white flower behind his ear sat at a desk near the door, smiling as he greeted visitors. Hawaiian music played and a television screen showed images of colorful hibiscus and bright beaches. Two men “talked stories” in the waiting room, swapping tales of what they both lost in the fire as they waited their turn to receive the essential services offered here.
This converted store in a Kahului shopping center is the centerpiece of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, or CNHA, a 23-year-old organization that has grown into a crucial leader in Maui’s recovery of the devastating fires that killed at least 102 people and displaced 12,000.
The center is divided into stations that address different needs: housing, financial aid, and mental health. There are FEMA and Red Cross tables, but everything that happens here is run by locals. The staff themselves are Lahaina survivors, some of whom lost their own homes.
“We created this center as a way to approach disaster relief culturally,” said Kuhio Lewis, the council’s CEO. “The concept here is: Come in, feel the spirit of aloha, meet someone you know, and we can help you through the process.”
More than 6,000 families have been helped at the center, but this is just one part of CNHA’s robust recovery effort. It provides financial support to families taking in displaced loved ones, rents apartments for survivors, runs workforce development programs to train people for cleanup and construction jobs, and builds temporary housing for families.
Her work has bridged the gap between Maui residents and federal and non-profit organizations on the mainland United States who have struggled to understand the landscape, culture and historical trauma of Hawaii’s people.
“We understand the needs of the community much better,” Lewis said.
The Associated Press spoke with Lewis a few weeks before the first anniversary of the fires on Aug. 8, 2023. He discussed what it was like to suddenly receive support from around the world, how CNHA became a major provider of housing for survivors, what he’s most proud of and what still worries him about Maui’s long recovery.
His answers have been edited for clarity and length.
_____
A: We’ve had over 22,000 donors from all over the world. They were small — as little as $5. We had a kid from out of state who sent us a letter with $12 in cash. He said he recycled cans and wanted to support. That’s the stuff you don’t forget. You may have gotten a check for $100,000 earlier in the week, but that $12 meant a lot to that kid.
The in-kind donations must have been in the millions. All the shipping costs for the building materials. The stoves and microwaves and air conditioning that go into the houses we build. The storage space for donations. School supplies. Everybody pitches in.
If we take the money we raised, the money we got from the Hawaii Community Foundation, which has been a tremendous supporter of our work, and the money we got from the government, the total is over $40 million.
It’s getting harder and harder to raise money. We’re still living off what we raised in the first five months or so. But the money runs out at some point. That’s partly why we’ve moved to housing. It has a longer lifespan.
_____
A: When we first launched our resource center, the community told us, “We need housing.” There were 12,000 individuals who were displaced. That was about 9,000 families who needed somewhere to go.
Many survivors were already staying with friends and family. That’s a very common thing in a community in Hawaii, where you lean on your friends and family. So we came up with our first program, the Host Housing Support Program, where we provided financial assistance to those who were caring for survivors. That was unique.
As things progressed, we began renting homes through our organization and subletting them to survivors, in order to minimize the amount of back and forth emails between survivors, who were already struggling, and landlords.
Long term, the rental market is just too big to sustain. We finally came to the conclusion, we just have to start building houses. We are building over 60 temporary two-bedroom units. These will serve as homes for at least five years.
The strong sense of the community was that they wanted to stay in West Maui and raise their children in West Maui. It’s all towards the end of helping them get back to Lahaina. While you’re going through the steps of rebuilding, at least you have a place to live. But the idea here is to get them back to normal.
_____
A: Our mission is to advance Native Hawaiians — culturally, politically, economically. And we do that because Native Hawaiians are leading this recovery.
It hasn’t taken us away from our mission, because ultimately we are for a thriving Hawaii. Right now, I see our organization as Hawaiians helping to lift Hawaii up. This is our homeland. If we were born here, we have a responsibility to take care of the people who live here, regardless of their ethnic background.
Sometimes we get too caught up in how to serve ourselves in our ethnic groups. That’s not who we are as a people, as a culture. It’s always been inclusive. And so this has brought us back to that. We help everyone. It’s the spirit of aloha.
_____
A: One of the main things I’m most concerned about is the fabric of Hawaii.
What makes Hawaii unique, compared to anywhere else in the world, is the culture. And when you start to see mass exodus of people, you start to change the fabric of Hawaii. That’s what’s at stake: the future of who Hawaii is as a people, as a place.
We have already lost thousands of people to this fire. They have moved off the island to other states. Even before the fire, we were seeing a mass exodus of families moving to stability outside of Hawaii because the cost of living was just too high.
We need to address the housing situation on Maui. And ultimately what happened here accelerated that conversation. Now you’re starting to see the policies that are going to change that trajectory.
We want people to stay home in Hawaii.
_____
A: It meant a lot to turn over the keys to this young family that had lost everything. I went to (the 50-unit development in Kahului) recently to check on the progress of the homes, and the kids were playing in the yard. They had made their own little makeshift pool with a tarp, and they were just playing with water.
We have now been able to hand out keys to a number of families and we will continue to do so.
_____
The Associated Press’s coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through AP’s partnership with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s coverage of philanthropy, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
