WAILUKU, Hawaii — The Lahaina home Tamara Akiona shared with 10 people was never quiet, and she loved it that way.
Akiona, her husband, uncle, stepdaughter, and her best friend’s family filled the house once owned by her grandparents, with four bedrooms, two living rooms and a spacious backyard.
She remembers the happy anticipation of hearing the front door open and not knowing who’d come home. Someone was always in the kitchen cooking. Neighbors gathered in the evening to chat and share food from their gardens. Kids chased the shave-ice man as he rolled past in his truck.
“That’s the stuff I miss,” said Akiona, 51. “We just don’t have that anymore.”
The home was one of the 1,898 residential structures that burned in the August 2023 Maui fires, which killed at least 102 people and displaced 12,000. Now Akiona and her husband live in a two-bedroom condo in Wailuku, 40 minutes from Lahaina. When they moved, she insisted her uncle, Ron Sambrano, come with them.
“It’s like ‘Lilo and Stitch,’” said Akiona, referring to the Disney movie about family bonds. “Nobody’s left behind.”
Estimates say up to one-third of those displaced by the Maui fires wound up in the homes of friends and family in the weeks after the disaster. It was a natural solution on an island already struggling with a housing crisis and where values like generosity and family are deeply rooted. But increasing a household’s size overnight can be stressful, and expensive.
The Akionas and families like them received support from a first-of-its-kind disaster-relief program. For one year, the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement’s Host Housing Support Program gave people who took in displaced loved ones stipends of $500 per person, up to $2,000, each month.
Disaster responders and advocates say it’s a powerful example of how to shape support around survivors’ cultural values and preferences, while alleviating the demand for temporary housing and keeping families and communities intact.
“Every single time we see a megafire we see mass displacement, and the most common displacement we see is that people then double and triple up with relatives and friends, sometimes for a few years even,” said Jennifer Gray Thompson, CEO of the disaster-advocacy nonprofit After The Fire. “But what they never get is actual money to do it.”
Right after the fires, the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, or CNHA, quickly learned how many displaced were bunking with friends and family — to avoid the hotels where 8,000 people were temporarily sheltered, because they couldn’t find an affordable rental, or because they simply preferred it.
“That’s very normal in Hawaii where you lean on your friends and family,” said Kuhio Lewis, CEO of the 23-year-old Oahu nonprofit. “That’s ju