Governor Green signs bill into law allocating $385.4M in emergency funds for the Maui wildfire recovery
Managing Editor
On Thursday in the Office of the Governor, Hawaii Governor Josh Green thanked the state house and senate in bringing forth Senate Bill 582 for him to sign into law, which will provide $385.4 million in emergency funds for Maui wildfire recovery efforts.
“About nine months ago we had a terrible tragedy and the losses were beyond catastrophic, they were—in terms of human lives lost—extraordinarily impossible to imagine,” Green said. “And then of course there was so much damage done to Maui and it affected all the people in Lahaina, and all the people on Maui, and in many ways all the people in the state.”
The bill will allocate $385.4 million in emergency appropriations for Maui wildfire relief for the fiscal year 2024 (June 30, 2024 through June 29, 2025). Of those funds, $292 million will be allocated for “non FEMA-eligible” families. An additional $29 million will be allocated to FEMA-eligible families. The roughly remaining $65 million will be allocated into the “extended One Ohana Fund” which 55 families are currently participating in.
Green said the number of displaced residents living in hotels at the moment is estimated to be around 1,743 individuals. He was optimistic in that number as it is down from the 7,796 who were initially displaced and lodged in temporary hotel housing after the wildfire.
“We hope over the course of the next 30 to 60 days everyone will be in a long term accommodation, so that we don’t have any hotel costs, which are admittedly expensive,” Green said.
Green also championed Senate Bill 2919, which the Governor will sign into law tomorrow at another press conference in Honolulu.
“A bill that I’m very, very happy about,” Green said. “It empowers the counties to enforce or crackdown on short-term rentals, the illegal short-term rentals. Why is that important? Because if those short-term rentals become long term rentals, people can then afford them. There has been a very serious challenge with escalating prices because the feds are paying quite a lot. We have to normalize the housing market. That will go a long way and we are going to rely on the county to pass the specific legislation to do that. They’ve already tee’d up bills.”