Maui’s post-wildfire housing crisis offers a warning for Los Angeles
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After the fires, state officials moved swiftly to freeze most rents on the island and issued emergency orders halting evictions. But the measures failed to curb an alarming trend. Maui residents who lived or worked in the burn zone have seen rent increases of roughly 50% in the months following the disaster, according to research from the University of Hawaii. Some landlords took advantage of the crisis, evicting tenants to make way for higher-paying renters. A year later, homelessness in Hawaii had nearly doubled.
Hawaiian housing advocates and researchers say Maui's experience is a cautionary tale for L.A., highlighting the need to pass - and then enforce - renter protections after a natural disaster disrupts an already tight rental market. How Los Angeles leaders respond is still an open question, and a battle is currently being fought between activists and politicians over strengthening renter protections. L.A. tenant organizers, already skeptical of officials' ability to enforce the state's price-gouging law, have also begun cataloguing alleged violations themselves in a spreadsheet that now sports more than 1,400 entries.
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Rents have risen on Maui by 10% to 20% since the fires, according to University of Hawaii economist Justin Tyndall. The increases were even higher for people who lived, worked or owned a business in the burn zones, according to a survey conducted by researchers Trey Gordner and Daniela Bond-Smith, also with the University of Hawaii. New, unpublished data they shared with Capital & Main shows those rents rose by more than 50%. Like those who lived in the burn zone, people who worked there also experienced "substantial displacement" from their homes, Bond-Smith explained.
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Natural disasters that destroy homes often lead to increased rents. Researchers with the Brookings Institute surveyed rental trends in major markets following natural disasters and attributed increases of between 4% and 6% directly to the disasters - an effect that "never fully went away," one of the authors wrote. Other research found permanent rent increases too. Evictions also tend to rise.
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