New CDP grants address food security, affordable housing in wildfire-affected Lahaina

A year ago, the world watched in shock as a series of wildfires, driven by drought, lightning and Hurricane Dora’s winds, spread across parts of the Hawaiian island of Maui. Everything is different in an island context, and that’s true of emergency management. On West Maui, crowded municipal planning and limited evacuation routes coupled with the rarity of wildfires in what is normally a tropical topography created a heartbreaking situation. The Lahaina fire alone consumed thousands of structures very quickly, and 102 human beings lost their lives while trying to evacuate to safety.

Since the launch of the Hawaii Wildfires Recovery Fund, CDP has made several grants, the first of which was announced here on the blog. And in March, the fund director, Sally Ray, along with colleagues Nicole Behnam and Devin Mathias, visited Lahaina as part of our ongoing assessment of needs. This ‘shoeleather philanthropy’ trip clarified our grantmaking vision, helping us to see where we might be most effective in strategically deploying funds to fill gaps and empower community-driven recovery.

Food insecurity remains an issue

Everything really is different in an island context, and wildfire recovery on Maui looks very different than it does on the mainland. We’ve learned through trusted partners on the ground that today, one year after the fire, food insecurity is an ongoing issue. People are cash-strapped; a survey managed by the Hawaii State Rural Health Association found that 71% of survivors who participated report that they are cutting back on the amount of groceries they buy out of necessity. Many residents who remain displaced have had to exit the non-congregate shelter system they were relying on for housing over the last several months, and they are doubled-up with other families, or living in makeshift units on other families’ properties, without being able to store food or cook it. And some displaced persons, like older adults and people living with disabilities and access or functional needs, are simply unable to access the ways they prepared and ate meals before the fire, because communities are fractured, now scattered across Hawaii.

CDP made a $250,000 grant to Hua Momona Foundation to support their community hot meals program. Hua Momona’s hot meals program is powered by a combination of paid agriculture workers, up-and-coming chefs and volunteers who assist in preparing and serving meals made with highly nutritious and culturally appropriate recipes as well as stunning presentation—“meals with aloha!” The grant also includes funds for the continuation of Hua Momona’s produce box delivery program which supports other organizations working to address food insecurity on the island, especially for Maui residents experiencing homelessness. Hot meals are prepared and served with dignity for everyone who gathers to eat, and local agriculture is sustained and supported. CDP is proud to make another investment in the effort to ensure that every wildfire survivor at least knows where their next meal will come from during this time of continued uncertainty.

Keeping Lahaina lands in Lahaina hands

When your island home is as beautiful as Maui is, everyone wants to own a piece of it. Decades of speculator-driven property investments have created an affordable housing crisis in Lahaina (and across the island) that the wildfires only exacerbated. We know that after many disasters in the US, ‘recovery’ for neighborhoods often comes with a hefty side effect: permanent displacement for generational residents who were in some way marginalized before the disaster and who become ‘priced out’ of their homes.

CDP awarded Lahaina Community Land Trust $644,000 to hire staff in support of their mission to ‘keep Lahaina lands in Lahaina hands.’ Community land trusts are a time-tested and promising way of securing housing affordability, cultural preservation and economic development in communities that are vulnerable to gentrification and displacement by what some experts term ‘disaster capitalism.’ This visualization tool (below) produced by Lahaina Community Land Trust paints a beautiful, and hope-filled, vision for a community-led realization of recovery. Take a moment to watch:

What’s next?

As our Domestic Funds team continues to realize our vision for the Hawaii Wildfires Recovery Fund, we are hopeful. While recovery will take a long time, we have heard from survivors, partners and fellow funders in Hawaii that every day, they see people coming together and doing incredible work to take care of each other and of their home—their ‘aina. There’s more work to be done. If you have questions about how CDP can help you support Lahaina’s recovery from the August 2023 wildfires, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the fund director at sally.ray@disasterphilanthropy.org.