Hawaii Land Grab Takes Shape

Targets holiday homes; omits hotels & mansions

• Governor to ban short-term rentals, with sweeping new zoning ordinances

• Holiday homes to become long-term housing; daily fine of $10,000

• Seeks to turn Maui into National Heritage park under federal control
  

• Lahaina fire survivors abandon beach encampment after rentals deal

• But have they won? Businesses warn of knock-on effect upon tourism services

• Studies suggest up to 50,000 Hawaiian jobs depend on short term rentals

• Judge forces publication of outside investigation into Aug 2023 fire

• Text messages damn emergencies administrator Herman Andaya

• Residents still cannot access their land; many cannot claim insurance

Hawaii series; see in particular:
Hawaii Targets Holiday Homes, Spares Hotels & Mansions - Land grab takes shape (May 05, 2024)
Dash For Land As Financiers Go To Ground - Colombia conference targets globalist grabs (Mar 16, 2024)
Maui Homeless Camp Out On Beaches - After the fire, Lahaina looks like a brutal exercise in artificial scarcity (Dec 10, 2023)
Hawaii’s Deep State Billionaires - 'Made men,' the creation of defence and intel agencies, are appropriating the islands (Sep 4, 2023)
Questions Swirl After Maui's Fires (Sep 28, 2023)
Maui's Fire Hydrants Ran Dry; The Politics Of Water (Sep 18, 2023)
What Exit Did Maui's Children Take - Home alone and roads blocked (Sep 16, 2023)
From The World Trade Center To Maui (Sep 12, 2023)
Maui’s Children - Smart Cities And Sex Trafficking (Aug 25, 2023)
Indigenous People Under Attack – From Hawaii to Australia (Aug 18, 2023)
Maui Land Grab Explains The Great Reset (Aug 17, 2023)
Hawaii Islanders Hit With New Normal (Aug 16, 2023)

(2,200 words or about 11 minutes of your company.)

One of the beach protests by Lahaina fire survivors

May 5, 2024

After months of hints about a land grab in Hawaii we are finally getting to see how it works.

Hawaii gives counties power to ban short-term rentals. Governor breaks ground for low cost homes under an emergency proclamation issued before last August’s fire. Homes in Lahaina have not been rebuilt. The ground scorched by fires has been painstakingly cleared by the military for months; people have to apply for permits to visit their plots; and in many cases not even insurance adjusters can gain access.

Next week is nine months since the devastating fire destroyed the former capital and royal seat, and picturesque old town, of Lahaina, with an official death toll of just over 100.

While some wait for answers, other native Hawaiians have left the islands to find work and join the diaspora abroad.

Forty deaths happened in one locale, where homes stood on a former plantation, Kuhua Camp. Interlinked by narrow roads, and their only connection to a highway blocked by a tree, officials are suggesting that because of poor roads homeowners may not receive permits to rebuild.

Food assistance for survivors living in hotels is being reduced, from three meals a day to one. In April the Red Cross and Hawaii Emergency Management Agency said they would cut back on buffet-style communal dinners.

Last week the Senate and House swiftly passed SB2919, which Governor Josh Green has already said he’ll sign, allowing Hawaii counties to redefine zoning ordinances, convert short-term rentals into long-term housing, to “guide the overall future development of the county.” Those who violate the law would be charged a fine of $10,000 per day.

It appeals to the public. "Every single fire survivor could be housed if short-term rentals were converted to long-term," Danielle Crothers told The Los Angeles Times.

The grass roots organisation Lahaina Strong ended their protest at the glacial pace of providing homes. Lahaina locals had camped on Kaanapali beach where native Hawaiians have a right to fish 24 hours a day.

An advocacy group set up after the fire, Lahaina Strong, welcomes the bill as a way to take back the district "neighbourhood by neighbourhood." [1]

The regulation applies to “multiple dwellings” or condominiums, so it won’t affect the wealthy who let out their mansions. By removing the cheaper end of the home rental market, it benefits hotels, which will be the only place for most visitors to stay.

It will also kill tens of thousand of jobs associated with housekeeping and maintenance.

With no plans announced to rebuild the old town of Lahaina, the bill may be a Pyrrhic victory.

Never mind that those burned out of their homes have largely been denied access. The insurance situation has been handled so badly — and questions of liability and accountability so obscured — that insurers may withdraw from the island.

“What you will hear in the coming weeks and months is that insurers will not insure states like Hawaii, where there is high risk,” Green said. The state must essentially be prepared to insure itself.

He advocates for three pieces of legislation that he proposed but were rejected by lawmakers in this session: a state insurance fund in case insurers stop serving some condominium and homeowners; a $25 climate fee on tourists; and giving Hawaiian Electric the power to borrow money against future customer income with state-guaranteed bonds. [2]

The LA Times, long associated like The Washington Post with the deep state, twists the story to present the land grab as an inevitability.

"State legislators evidently share that ire, overwhelmingly passing a bill Wednesday to give counties the ability to phase out short-term rentals. Gov. Josh Green is expected to sign the bill into law Friday."

Populism is OK if it serves the state, or so it seems.

Earlier this year the island government offered landlords almost twice the market rate, yet more than 2,000 people are still being shuffled between hotels.

Document trail

Not everything is going the government’s way.

A judge forced Hawaii's attorney general to release all documents, interviews and data collected by the outside team hired to investigate the disaster. Lawyers representing victims of last summers "wildfire" will use the documents in hundreds of lawsuits.

The state of Hawaii had previously refused to share information, calling requests frivolous.

Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez hired outside investigators who found fire safety officials, taking part in a drill on another island, were slow to return to Maui. Alerts failed to sound and there was a general communications breakdown.

The Maui Emergency Management Administrator Herman Andaya did not return to Maui immediately, nor did he appear publicly until days after the fire - and then he resigned.

Text exchanges with his assistant Gaye Gabuat show Andaya did not take the fire seriously.

On Aug 8, 9:37 p.m.
Andaya to Gabuat: “How’s the other fires?”

9:38 p.m.
Gabuat to Andaya: “Still burning”
Andaya to Gabuat: “Wow... LOL”

Even that investigation is proceeding slowly and the AG has extended the $1.5 million contract by a year.

U.S. Rep Tulsi Gabbard said of the exchanges, "disturbing does not even put it... when you know there are people being burned to ash." She told Joe Rogan there has been no accountability "at the various failure points." [3]

Collateral damage