 Welcome back to Think Tech, I'm Jay Feidell. This is Community Matters, and we are talking today about the community of Maui, which affects us all. And we have for this discussion our, well, I say our reporter on the ground in Maui, Mahila Stoops, who is a host of one of our shows, but who these days reports on the progress or lack of it in rebuilding Maui. Hi, Mahila. Thank you for having me, Jay. I appreciate it. I want to start off a little backward here and ask you, you know, in the process of taking care of people, restoring their lives so far, what particular agency or individual has distinguished itself or himself or herself to you? Who is at the top? I know there are many, but who is at the top of the heap? Who should we compliment and extoll? Well, there have been many organizations that have helped us and we're very grateful for their support and there have been many private companies and individuals that have helped us throughout these past five weeks or six weeks almost. But the one non-profit that really made an impression on me was World Central Kitchen. It's a non-profit that showed up, I believe, on day three and they delivered chef-prepared meals, hot meals. There were several options to choose from. It was just wonderful. To me, they were well-organized. It was, they were at the right place, at the right time and with plenty of food, cooked food that you just picked up and ate it and could go on with whatever else you needed to do that day. That's great. That's great. I'm so glad you mentioned that. Mahila, let's talk about the problem of rebuilding. You know, one individual that I'm acquainted with, his house burned down completely and he was lucky enough to have a responsive insurance company, but he hasn't been able to have the land cleared, I mean, legally cleared by the county or whatever agencies are involved in giving him the go-ahead. And so he hasn't been able to develop plans for a new house. He hasn't been able to, without plans, he hasn't been able to have them approved or get a contractor or a start. And it looks like a five-year project, honestly, which is really not a good way to spend five years because you don't have a house in the meantime. So I wanted to ask you, I wanted to think that we are interested in the various tasks and challenges involved in rebuilding Maui. And one of the things, of course, right now is the kind of challenges that the person I'm talking about has had will have, but also everyone else. And I like your thoughts, what you hear in the community from acquaintances and the like about their issues in rebuilding because we really need to do that soon. What have you heard? Well, so for Lahaina specifically, at this point in time, you have to keep in mind that we still do not have access to the properties. And that would accomplish two things, would be an opportunity to collect information about the status of the property that the insurance companies are requiring. And secondly, it would, I think, help with the grieving process of this community. Seeing it and maybe being able to recover, you know, and this is a real story, the wedding ring that somehow survived the fire or a little piece of a ceramic that survived the fire. So first thing is access to the property. Second thing is the cleanup. The cleanup, it will take probably approximately two years. During this time- What do you mean by cleanup, Mahalla? Well, the, there's the debris or the toxic debris that the EPA and FEMA are going to remove in the first phase. And then there's the cleanup to prepare the parcel for building. And it gets complicated and maybe foundations that have been affected and need to be dug out. There is discussions that about four to six inches of soil may need to be completely removed. And that opens another question. Where do you take it? Right? And who removes it? Yeah. So this needs to be done. It will take about two years. And then from there on, supposedly one would be able to start building. And one could say, okay, you have two years where you could design your house and apply for permitting. We all know how notoriously slow the building department is already. So we hope that there will be some sort of an expedited process for permitting. And that's for properties that are not in special management area that are not dealing with erosion or maybe properties like in Wahi Kuli where they're on cesspools, most of them. And an upgrade to septic or to public sewer is needed. So, you know, if you make it, the biggest question for me is how are we gonna make it to year three? Because there's no housing. There's not enough housing. Literally, as you do the math, you have thousands of units that have been affected and you have to find thousands of units in the remaining part of the island or I mean, not just Westside, the entire island. And there's just not enough. There is, what sources of income are we going to have? You know, tourism is already taking a big hit. Many businesses have been destroyed and they will have to go through the rebuilding process, not just rebuilding the storefront, but rebuilding their business. By the time they're done, their business has changed. We live in a very fast moving world, right? So, you have to start designing how your business is going to operate in four years, not next month. That's interesting because while you look down the pike at what's gonna be in four years, everybody else is changing. So, it's like change on steroids. And if in the ordinary course, you wanna account for change, this is not the ordinary course and you have to account for changes that are very hard to anticipate. Right, and you have to account for all of this while you're dealing with insurance, your mortgage, your housing situation, your source of income. And if you have a family, where are your kids going to school? You know, I can't imagine, I can't even begin to imagine how hard it is for a family and there are many of them with two toddlers at home having to make numerous phone calls to all these entities to reconstruct their life at this point, forget the house. It's just to put their life back together and have assemblies of a normal life. And, you know, there are so many resources available. It's a full-time job trying to go through the resources and apply and see what's coming through. And it's impossible to plan. You can't have a resources, you must mean money. Yes, financial. So let's talk about money. Let's talk about money in terms of the insurance companies that have insured and residences and for that matter, businesses in West Maui and all over Maui. And whether they're paying off, what do you hear? What I hear is difficulties, difficulties, frustration, essentially most of the people that are dealing with insurance are facing a long learning curve, understanding the terms of the insurance, understanding what their rights are and dealing with a feeling that somebody is taking advantage of them. Because, you know, the job of an insurance adjuster is to find a reason to not pay the insured amount. And the stories that I hear are just appalling, you know, trying to prove that rebuilding your house is not gonna cost less than $360,000. Well, what can you build with $360,000 nowadays? But you have to explain this to somebody from Alabama that has no understanding of how the economy functions here. What is the price, what is the cost of labor? What is the price of materials? What it takes to build a house here? Even if you had all the money in the world, how long it takes? So there's a lot of frustration with the insurance companies. As a matter of fact, based on simply anecdotal evidence my pulse on the community and those that I know that have been affected by the fire, there's maybe two in 10 people that are having smooth sailing with their insurance, meaning the insurance pay them the full amount of their coverage without any stress. The rest of them, it's like a full-time job providing information, being required to provide pictures of your burnt property when you cannot access it. It's ridiculous. And it's also ridiculous when Google Maps already show the burnt area. You could just use satellite imagery. But somebody, I mean, and I don't wanna make the insurance companies the bad guys because not everybody's bad and not everybody's good. It's just that probably the process involves clicking on the screen and moving to the next screen and filling in this form and they can't move next if they haven't clicked that they have a picture of the house. It's a process issue, I think. It's not necessary humanity issue. Before the show began, you would tell me about this dichotomy between people who could commit to rebuild and they get a certain percent of the proceeds under the policy and other people who could not commit to rebuild and they get, how does that work? Right, so apparently, and it varies from insurance company to insurance company and from contract to contract, right? But if there are situations where if one does not build a home, it doesn't have to be the exact home, but if they do not build a home, then the insurance payout is significantly less. It's about 50% of the insured amount. It's increasingly discouraging to plan to build at this point in time when we know the cleanup is gonna take about two years and then the question is who is going to be here to build these homes because it's just financially difficult to be here. Yeah, but let me add a point. If you are only gonna get half of your insurance proceeds because you can't commit to rebuild, then you don't have enough money to rebuild. And therefore the property that existed before it doesn't exist and won't exist and your ownership of it will be worth a lot less because when they only pay you half and you have a property that is worth a lot less and since for the lack of a house, you can't live there, this achieves exactly what we want to avoid that is forcing people to sell, forcing them to sell and go. And that must be happening, no? Well, not quite yet. So at this point in time, the people that we see that are leaving are leaving because they can't find housing, they can't find jobs, they can't find schools for their kids. So that's why they're leaving. But you're right, the people will have to sell because I should also mention some insurance companies when they finally issue a check to you. If you have a mortgage, the check is written to both the insured person and the mortgagee. So now it becomes an issue of, okay, do I take the insurance money and pay off the mortgage which might be at the 4.5% interest rate or it might be at 7% interest rate if I bought in the past year. Yeah, trust them on, yeah. Right, so it becomes a real financial conundrum for some by trying to figure out what am I gonna do? How much money do I actually have and what can I do with the money? And I don't have the money yet, I can't plan for it quite yet. I think what's the most difficult for a lot of the victims of the fires is uncertainty and it's an uncertainty that is not going to be solved tomorrow or the next month. Yeah, that's very stressful, isn't it? Not only for the wage earner, the parents, but the children and everybody in the family is stressed out by having that uncertainty. What about the mortgages? Are they giving people a pass or are they insisting on payments? My understanding is that, and as a matter of fact, I even received a letter from my bank saying we're trying to work and my house was not affected, but they were proactive in offering solutions and what they, it does say very clearly, it's like we are trying to avoid foreclosure. So that's the ultimate or the worst case scenario. So they're offering deferrals, they're offering forbearance, they're offering to refinance, but I don't know how refinancing is gonna make any sense when, again, if you had a mortgage at 4.5% to refinance, would it mean to now have a mortgage at 7%? So, at least. So they are cooperating, but I think what needs to happen is you may recall during the recession how there was a short sale process where you could sell the property for less than what you owe to the bank. So essentially there was a forgiveness for what you owe to the bank. I think there should be some sort of program that would allow forgiving a portion of the mortgage or all of it in these situations. I think somebody needs to consider, I'm not smart enough to figure out the rest of it, but I'm thinking it's been done before and why not do it again and give these people a better chance at rebuilding their life when they're not burdened financially? Yeah, sure. And the banks may be forced to do that because I think you're gonna see large numbers of people in Maui who can't pay the mortgage. Are they gonna foreclose? That's gonna be pretty mean and it's gonna be bad publicity for them if they foreclose on Maui, everybody is sympathetic. So I don't think they'll have a choice. They'll have to make some accommodation. But I wanted to ask you about the businesses, okay? Because without businesses, there are no jobs and without jobs, nobody has an income to pay a mortgage or to pay anything. It's problematic in the sense that when the individual is able to rebuild the home and get a mortgage, the mortgagee is gonna require insurance. Again, especially now, some carriers have left town. They're not gonna write any fire coverage or any coverage on properties in Maui and others are gonna increase their rates and to cover this newly discovered risk. And so it's a conundrum in the sense that the mortgagee wants to see insurance, but the insurance companies aren't gonna be willing. And so no insurance, no mortgage, no mortgage, no insurance, no nothing. I can see that coming to a crunch, can't you? Yes, which is gonna put people again in a position of having to sell. And then the question that comes in is particularly with the properties around Front Street is who are we going to sell to? And that's a very, very touchy subject for the locals. And it's a problem that doesn't have, I mean, what we're dealing with is not one problem, it's multiple problems. And it's like there's new angles that are surfacing every day, something that we haven't thought of it yet. And now it's, I don't have all the answers and I don't know how we're going and who is going to make decisions on how to rebuild. Well, who is the default player here? Is it the county of Maui? Is it the state of Hawaii? Is it some federal agency that comes around and holds your hand and helps you? Is it the small business administration for all those businesses that have been destroyed and which we need? We can't rebuild Maui without businesses. We can't rebuild Lahaina without Front Street and all those retail and other businesses there. So, query, who's there to help? It's one thing to have a food arrangement or a soup kitchen and to help them with clothing and crisis shelter and all that, so I suppose is still going on. But it's another thing to hold their hand and provide legal accounting, general business consulting about how you start a business again. And I think a lot of people who are maybe at the edge on this who don't have those skills or resources, they're gonna leave. They're not gonna even try to start it up again. But what are the comfort points? Who cares? Who is involved? Who is coming around to help? You know, I have to say, if there's one thing that I felt throughout this tragedy is the support of the community in so many ways and shapes and anything from creating individuals, creating learning hubs because there's not enough schools to, I'm thinking probably the next step, there'll be programs where people can, I don't know, maybe learn how to be an electrician in six months. We're gonna need a gazillion electricians. That seems like a great career to me, I consider it too. So I think we're all going to, it's gonna be hard, it's not gonna be easy and we're gonna have to be flexible and we're gonna have to support each other in every way we can, you know? Maybe skip buying groceries at a big chain store today and go have a small meal at the restaurant instead and you're supporting a business, you're just helping them go through this tough time and so I really believe in supporting businesses in everything helps, you know? It might not be that they're gonna have the same level of income as they had before the fire but it might be just enough to keep them going for now until things get a little bit more established. So I can only speak for myself, you know? I still have, if the fire didn't happen, I still would have spent money, right? And it's just trying to figure out how to spend it in a way that it can benefit somebody in my community. So, you know- Are you still volunteering? Yeah, yeah, I am. I'm doing a couple of things and one of them, last week, I went and helped with one of the learning hubs. That was very hard. And I wanna mention this, there's a teacher from Kameh the third, Mr. Livermore. He's been teaching in a PD Park for almost three weeks. He teaches math to elementary school kids. I was there for two hours and I was exhausted afterwards. I don't know how he does it, but he's my hero, for sure. And you go to Nappili Park and all of these centers, Honokwai Park, Esternes, and there's so much support in so many ways and everybody's trying to figure out how to help each other. And then when you have some money and there's still many people that have money, then you try to spend it in a way that will support somebody else. You hire the cleaner, you pay the cleaner to clean somebody else's house. You go have that dinner, you name it. You buy the dress that you didn't need to buy, but it's from a locally owned and operated store and you gift it to someone else. So it's all of these acts that I think if we all could do a little bit, it's just gonna get that engine going of the economy. Exactly. So you talk about education and retraining and I remember visiting the electrical, the IBEW was it, in Kalihi here years ago and they had a training facility and they brought in journeymen. They wanted to make a members of the union of course and they taught them how to be electricians. It seems to me that the skill that the IBEW has here in Honolulu could be used on Maui and you could train a whole generation of electrical workers using the lessons that the union would teach. Same thing with the plumbers and contractor work and so forth. They're conditioning and elevator technicians as well. They're high demand. So yeah, there are. Here's my question to you and we only have a few minutes left, Mahila, but I wanted to ask you this. You are observing, thinking, talking, talking to the community kind of wrapping yourself in all that is happening and trying to figure out what should happen. And my question to you is, Maui is gonna be a new place. It isn't gonna be the old Maui. The books have been written about the old Maui. It had a local charm that was really fabulous. I remember a book called Lucky You Live Hawaii where there is something like that about a pig farmer on Maui. All that's gone. And we have a new society that will develop and you've been talking about how we do that. But in your view, in your eyes, what does the new Maui look like? I know it's early to ask this, but at least the way you think about it now, what does the new Maui look like? Well, you know, it's as beautiful as ever. That hasn't changed. The beaches, the ocean, the cookpine trees, the West Maui mountains, that hasn't changed. What has changed is there's no more small businesses on Front Street, no more art galleries, no more funky houses and quirky people. And so that's gone for now. I think it's an amazing opportunity to upgrade the infrastructure. We can finally maybe we'll be getting, you know, sewer and wahi kuli, which they haven't had all these years. We could upgrade electrical, we could upgrade plumbing. All these things that we needed to do in light of the fact that infrastructure was old, was threatened by shoreline erosion. So it's an amazing opportunity, as a matter of fact, to do things, to make things better. But of course, it's not gonna happen in a minute. It's gonna take years and we're gonna have to be patient and wise in the decisions that we make. So I'm optimistic. I'm here to stay, I'm not going anywhere. And I'm trying to convey that or I'm hoping that that feeling is contagious and other people feel like me. That takes me to my very last question to you, Mahila. And that is this, you know, the problem with the media and news covering tragedies like the fires in Maui, it passes off the screen. And I talk about change, you know, you and I talk about change and the world will change. And the world will change and people will be thinking about other places and other issues and other tragedies for that matter. And I'm concerned that the people in other places in the state will move on, will forget, will not be thinking about Maui the way they have been. So what is your advice to them? What is your advice to the people who are not on Maui, who don't, you know, live on Maui, who don't necessarily think about Maui, what is your advice to them about this? You know, you come to the islands and Maui and you either love it or you don't. And if you love it, it's not a minute. It's, what we've seen is all this love from people that have been here once in their life, twice in their life. And you have that connection or you don't. And for those that have that connection, you know, just remember the amazing things about this island. They're still here. Thank you. Mahila Stoops reported to us on Maui on the condition of recovery. We'll circle back and find out more in a few weeks. Thank you so much, Maya.