A year and a half since fires devastated the historic town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, Hawaii, only six houses have been rebuilt—six out of more than 2,000.
Why is the recovery effort taking so long? Initially, the biggest hurdles were the pace of debris removal and damage litigation. Both were overcome only last month. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cleared the final lots on February 19, while the Hawaiian Supreme Court ruled that a $4 billion settlement for victims can begin to move forward.
The main challenge now is dealing with a crushing permitting regime that slows or outright bans construction. But local political dysfunction has discouraged state and local leaders from taking emergency action to cut through this red tape.
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Builders on Maui face a vast web of zoning restrictions, water-use regulations, and historical- and environmental-preservation requirements, and separate applications and schedules for electrical, plumbing, grading, and driveway work. The local permitting office is also poorly staffed, which makes processing take a ridiculous amount of time. Figures from September 2024 showed that the county took 206 days on average to issue a single building permit. Ordinarily, you need several to build a house from scratch.
The Maui County Council attempted to speed up permitting by passing Bill 21 in February 2024, establishing a consolidated permit for rebuilding disaster-affected homes. But permitting times remained slow. Even after the county took the extraordinary step of opening a dedicated Recovery Permitting Center in April—hiring private contractors to process permits—approvals still took over 50 days. Homeowners with houses older than five years still had to apply for a new permit, and those without floor plans on record still had to hire an architect to draft new ones.
Further permitting relief took eight more months. It was not until October 2024 that Hawaii governor Josh Green issued an emergency exemption sparing multifamily homes from “Special Management Area” reviews—coastal environmental reviews that would have added a whole additional year of permitting for 533 houses. Then there was another long lull. Only last month did Maui Mayor Richard Bissen work with Governor Green to extend SMA exemptions to 103 affected commercial properties.
A still unresolved issue is that many historic structures remain illegal to rebuild under modern zoning laws. Jonathan Helton, a policy researcher at the Hawaii-based Grassroot Institute, has reported on buildings like Lahaina’s Waiola Church, built in 1823. The church occupies a lot that planners designated as residential-only in the 1960s. The church was given an exemption at the time, but since the congregation has not met for a full year, the exemption expired. Only last month did the Maui County Council advance Bill 105, which would exempt historic buildings like Waiola church from zoning restrictions. It should pass this week.
These exemptions are coming absurdly late, compared with California’s recent disaster response. A week after the L.A. wildfires broke out, Governor Gavin Newsom exempted all rebuilding from California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and Coastal Waters Act reviews and directed state agencies to identify ways to expedite permitting.
These long delays are a consequence of Maui’s deep political dysfunction. Maui residents have long been furious at their leaders for allowing housing prices to quadruple over the past 20 years. The issue is not complex: a hostile regulatory environment has kept homebuilding from keeping pace with population growth. The only homes that do get built are typically large vacation properties for global elites, as those are the only projects that can turn a profit.
The Maui County Council has nine seats, split five-to-four between rival visions for the future. One side wants to keep Maui rural and closed to outsiders, consequences be damned. The other recognizes that allowing luxury tourism is the best way to expand the economy quickly and pay for public services.
Tight electoral margins discourage bold action. The most recent election, last November, saw a close race in which incumbent councilman and self-described “builder” Tom Cook won his seat by only 97 votes out of more than 52,000 cast.
The political divide has only grown wider since the fires. Aside from activists seeking Internet fame by provoking viral confrontations at public meetings, radical councilmembers have called their pro-building colleagues names like “colonizer,” openly questioned what would happen if they defied Hawaii state law promoting homebuilding, and advocated for secession from the United States. A general spirit of conspiracy and bad faith pervades the island’s politics.
This polarization stems from the County of Maui’s complex political geography, which has fostered overlapping layers of mistrust toward “outsiders.” Some residents resent the U.S. federal government for the annexation of Hawaii in 1898, while many even distrust the state government. Since 70 percent of Hawaii’s population lives on Oahu, Maui residents—who make up just 10 percent—often feel that state decisions are made without understanding their needs.
The County of Maui also governs two smaller islands, Lanai and Molokai. Most residents live on Maui. But 2 percent live on Lanai, where Oracle founder Larry Ellison owns 98 percent of the land through a hotel and resort company. The other 5 percent live on Molokai, an island hostile to tourism and accessible only by propeller plane. Two of the county council’s nine seats are reserved for residents of these vastly different islands.
Deep divisions exist even on Maui itself. West Maui and East Maui are separated by a two-and-a-half-hour drive and have distinct local identities. They also have their own designated seats on the county council. Social and ethnic divides add further complexity: Maui is home to low-income residents, wealthy trust funders and retirees, Native Hawaiians, and descendants of Japanese sugar plantation workers, among others.
These local dynamics discouraged Governor Green from taking aggressive action. Suspicious residents interpreted his initial promises to rebuild Lahaina quickly as a plot to redevelop the historic town to profit “outside” developers. He backed off in response. Even Mayor Bissen has avoided taking strong actions or asking for strong state assistance for fear of looking like an outsider dictating terms to West Maui.
These problems are not particular to Maui. Local political dysfunction continues to manifest in post-wildfire recovery efforts across the United States. Though California did well in quickly issuing environmental-review exemptions in L.A., it now hosts at least nine recovery organizations that have failed to coordinate effectively with one another. L.A.’s own history of decentralized local politics is similarly reasserting itself.
Maui now faces two big questions. The first is what it can do to mitigate future wildfires. Today, power lines in West Maui remain exposed above dry brush, and many wonder who will pay to bury these lines underground. Moreover, who will manage the brush? The county is understaffed, and the island’s housing crisis has made it tough to attract qualified workers. Hawaii’s unions have long prevented the Maui Civil Service from issuing private contracts or even paying differential salaries. Perhaps this time, the need for fire mitigation will prompt residents to support extraordinary measures.
Another significant question is how—or whether—to grow Maui’s economy. The fastest path to growth is to ease the housing crisis by making it easier to build. The island desperately needs zoning updates and streamlined permitting. Permitting can be sped up through outright simplification or hiring more staff—as post-disaster actions have proven. But many oppose growth. The county has not only resisted updating its zoning code for 65 years but also added more layers of regulation and review.
With all this in mind, one can perhaps empathize with local feelings of conspiracy and mistrust. It’s a situation formed by both negligence and design.
Photo by Mengshin Lin for The Washington Post via Getty Images
