Lahaina also has everything that makes Hawaii an increasingly difficult and frustrating place to live. Tourism dominates, putting pressure on the environment and disrupting daily life. Wealthy visitors drive home values to astonishing heights (the median home price in the Lahaina area is $1.7 million), placing homeownership out of reach for most permanent residents. Within its small patch of western Maui, the oceanfront community of 13,000 people — once a center of whaling and ancient Hawaiian power — contains all of the economic tensions that have simmered beneath Hawaii’s gorgeous surface for years.
Officials and residents stress that the fires did not discriminate, wiping out fancy vacation rentals and modest homes dating back to the days of Lahaina’s sugar plantations. Mick Fleetwood, the leader of the band Fleetwood Mac, lost his popular restaurant, Fleetwood’s on Front Street, and the staff members lost their employer.
And many have pointed to the way the community has immediately stepped up to help each other, with volunteers and neighbors offering food, places to stay and transportation.
Yet, as residents were allowed back into their neighborhoods on Friday for a first look at the damage, many worried about how or whether they could rebuild — a reflection of the disparity among Hawaii’s multilayered society of renters, owners, part-time and full-time residents, low-wage workers, newcomers and Native Hawaiians. Some Hawaii residents who lost their homes and jobs said they could not see how they would be able to stay.
Many said they feared Lahaina would simply re-emerge as another Waikiki, dominated by corporate-owned luxury brands and packed with tourists.
“My concern is that we’re going to lose a lot of people, because it’s going to take too long” to recover, said Angie Leone, 46, who built a business in Lahaina managing 50 rental properties with 12 employees. After the fires, about five units were left. Four of her employees lost their homes.
The Leones’ own home just outside Lahaina was spared. But the community she and her family love had begun unraveling. Already, a friend who ran a jewelry business in Lahaina told her that he planned to move his family to Kentucky. She said she hoped officials would approve building permits for reconstruction and allow people to reopen businesses that employ workers quickly.
“I think the people of Lahaina would want it to be restored historically,” she said. “The local community would not allow it to become a Waikiki. It needs to be preserved and rebuilt with the character and the heart that it has.”
Her husband, Michael Leone, 48, added: “It won’t be the same. But it could be better.”
How this vivid microcosm of Hawaii recovers from the disaster could either end up exacerbating economic tensions or prove a turning point.
Angus McKelvey, a state senator who grew up in Lahaina and now represents parts of Maui, said the town was at a “fork in the road.”
Many of the neighborhoods that burned were densely populated with many of the town’s original plantation-style homes that, over time, had been bought by investors and subdivided into apartments that were rented out to workers. Because of the town’s density, he said, the destruction of the hundreds of homes there translates into as many as 6,000 people who are now homeless.
Mr. McKelvey, a Democrat, said the state should work swiftly to purchase and redevelop the land into higher-quality, affordable housing. The alternative of leaving it to market forces could lead to investors taking advantage of the tragedy “to put up more million-dollar homes,” he said.
It’s a “bold opportunity,” he said, but “people are generally scared of what could emerge from the ashes.”
by Jill Cowan and Michael Corkery, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Philip Cheung for The New York Times
[ed. After the initial shock, this is what I wondered. How do you recreate something so unique, in an equitable way?]
[ed. After the initial shock, this is what I wondered. How do you recreate something so unique, in an equitable way?]
