MAUI LANI — Three months ago, Tricia Clements was packing up her belongings as Maui County cleared out a houseless encampment of nearly 50 people on Amala Place in Kahului.
On Wednesday, Clements was again loading up her things and figuring out her next move. She and 23 other unhoused people were forced from an open field of brush in Maui Lani by the county, which cited increased crime complaints and 13 fires in the area this year as the reason for the cleanup.
HJI Weekly Newsletter
Get more stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative’s weekly newsletter:
ADDING YOU TO THE LIST…
“It’s just one thing after another,” an exasperated Clements said as she stood beside her dog and her loaded car.
It was the latest in a series of homeless encampment sweeps that the county has said it conducted to address fire hazards and general public safety. In August, a month after clearing out Amala Place for safety and sanitation reasons, the county also removed a homeless community in Ukumehame due to fire risks in an incident that led to seven arrests.
“It’s not so much the issue with encampments,” Maui County Communications Director Laksmi Abraham said Wednesday. “The priority, as we all know, is ever since the 2023 wildfires, there’s been a heightened emphasis on public safety and mitigating potential fire threats.”
But the reappearance of people who were kicked out of other areas shows how hard it is to find a more long-term solution and get people into permanent housing.
The area where the unhoused community lived was part of about 52 county-owned acres off Wai‘ale Road where the Maui Emergency Management Agency said it is working to reduce wildfire risks that include removing overgrown kiawe and haole koa trees, dry grass and derelict vehicles.
The land also is in the vicinity of multiple housing projects, an industrial park, Pōmaikaʻi Elementary School and a Mormon church.
From Jan. 1 to Oct. 9, there have been 118 calls for service in the area, nearly tripling the 43 calls made during the same period last year, according to the Maui Police Department. The resulting reports have included terroristic threatening, theft, suspicious activity, warrant arrests, criminal property damage and promoting dangerous drugs, the county said.
Timothy Shim, principal of Pōmaikaʻi Elementary, was unavailable for an interview Thursday and Friday but said in a statement that “the safety of our students, staff and families is always our top priority” and thanked MEMA for making the area safer.
Shim said there had been theft and multiple fires near the campus, “which has raised real concerns for our school community.”
Benjamin Hanks, president of the Kahului West Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that’s located along Maui Lani Parkway, told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative that the church “shares concern with the increasing number of fires on the adjacent property in recent months.”
“Our primary step has been to collaborate with the county and support their professionally-managed wildfire-risk reduction project on the adjacent land,” Hanks said via text. “Any further security or site-management decisions will be in coordination with the county’s guidance.”
The church installed fencing around the vacant field it owns next to the county’s land “to be in compliance with the county’s fire risk-reduction efforts,” Hanks said.
But Hanks said the church hasn’t been impacted by the unhoused people who have been living on nearby county property.
“We recognize that unhoused individuals face serious challenges that require compassion, support and care from many individuals and organizations across the island,” Hanks said. “The county’s onsite outreach, in partnership with nonprofit organizations who are dedicated to addressing these challenges, are a start. We recognize that community efforts will need to be ongoing, dynamic and collaborative to more effectively support and lift this vulnerable community.”
On Oct. 30, Maui County posted notices throughout the site and directly to houseless residents that it would be clearing the area of fire hazards. A meeting was held with the community on Nov. 5. Outreach by the county and its nonprofit partners has been ongoing in the area since July, the county said.
The most recent assessment identified 24 people — 15 men and nine women — ages 19 to 59. All 24 reported substance abuse challenges, and 13 reported mental health challenges, the county said. There also were seven animals on-site.
The county said that 14 people declined services and 11 were engaging with outreach teams. One couple agreed to enter Ka Hale A Ke Ola’s shelter.
The county said it’s working under the guidance of cultural monitors and archaeologists to protect culturally sensitive sites, including known iwi kūpuna (ancestral bones). Workers have been removing debris by hand and with specialized equipment to minimize impacts to these areas.
While a stolen vehicle, multiple guns and electrical hazards were discovered during the cleanup, no arrests were made Wednesday, the county said.
Volunteers who came by to help said that unhoused residents turned to Maui Lani because they were forced out of other places.
“The message they receive time and time again is you need to be out of sight and out of mind, which is why they’re so deep in the brush in Maui Lani, doing their best to meet their basic needs,” said Jason Moscow of Compassion in Action, an initiative of the nonprofit Hanuman Maui that brings meals, water, clothing and supplies to encampments twice a week.
Moscow’s group came by Tuesday with pickup trucks and helped four people move. They returned early Wednesday morning, where Moscow said he witnessed “a lot of very stressed-out people trying to shovel their belongings into vehicles or get their vehicles running.”
“A day like today is just another day of inflicting unnecessary trauma on a population of people who are already struggling,” he said. “And it’s a county-created fire hazard because this encampment is built out of folks who were swept from Kahului Harbor and folks who were swept from Amala Place.”
Clements said she and other people who had been living near Kanaha Beach Park came to Maui Lani because they wanted to stay together.
“How are we all still trying to stay a community being put over here, put over there, without anywhere else to go?” Clements said.
She has four dogs and a cat, which is part of what makes it hard to find a place to live. Before the August 2023 wildfire, she was houseless and living on the outskirts of Lahaina. Eventually she ended up unhoused at Kahului Harbor and Amala Place. After both places were swept, she ended up at Maui Lani.
Clements said the community has been living “out of sight” and wished the wildfire prevention work had only involved “cleaning out the brush, not the people.”
“We felt comfortable, that was our home,” she said.
On Wednesday, Cecilia Young showed up to help Clements pack up her belongings. The two friends had both lived at Kahului Harbor and Amala Place.
Young said she decided to move into Ka Hale A Ke Ola’s shelter after leaving Amala Place because her mom and nephew had both gone to live there. She understands why some people don’t want to go to the shelter, saying it’s “not for everybody.” There are more rules, and she said she got written up a couple of times for being in the bathroom or smoking a cigarette outside after curfew. She misses the freedom of living on her own.
But overall, she said she feels safe, and she’s grateful for the “three square meals” a day, the “zero tolerance” for violence, alcohol and drugs, and the helpful staff who have offered resources to apply for housing or get important documents.
Sue Sadecki, executive director of Ka Hale A Ke Ola, agreed that shelter life is a transition, but if people work to gain skills and stability while they’re there, “it can be very successful.”
“Coming into shelter is not the end goal,” Sadecki said. “The whole purpose of having shelter is to pull them through shelter and get them into permanent housing.”
The shelter initially saw an influx of 15 households with a total of 24 people after Amala Place was cleared out, but no one came after the Ukumehame sweep and just one couple came after Wai‘ale. As of Friday, three people who came from Amala Place remained in the shelter. One person had been housed, and the rest had left.
Ka Hale A Ke Ola is currently at 90% capacity, Sadecki said. The Wailuku facility has 40 studios and 32 two-bedroom units in addition to a 32-bed male dorm and a 10-bed female dorm.
The shelter has also seen increasing phone calls of interest as evictions rise following the end of the moratorium on evictions earlier this year, Sadecki said.
She said if federal funding cuts continue for social service programs such as housing, food stamps, health care and veterans’ benefits, it will leave even more people struggling for basic needs.
“If these services, which we know to be social determinants of health, start getting cut, the bigger question is: ‘What are we going to do as a community to stand up and advocate for all of these things?’ ” Sadecki said. “Because if we know this is where we are today, where are we going to be in four months when some of this may not come back?”
When asked how to end the cycle of people being pushed between encampments, Abraham said, “We acknowledge as the county that we have to find a place for them, too. They’re all part of this community, and they all deserve a place to call home.”
Maui County has been trying for years to launch a safe parking program that would allow people to sleep in their cars in a safe designated area overnight. Abraham said the county has awarded the contract and has a property identified. She said waiting until the program is ready before clearing out homeless encampments “would be the best scenario, but unfortunately, given the heightened concern we have from the community,” the county decided to take action.
Abraham said the county is exploring the idea of a managed encampment, but that also comes with a lot of liability.
However, she said, the biggest challenge is when residents don’t want to accept the services and resources offered to them.
“We’re going to continue to have to deal with this issue no matter what services are put in place,” said Lori Tsuhako, director of the Maui County Department of Human Concerns. “Even once the safe parking program is up and running, that’s not going to eliminate this issue, right? And this is something as a community that we’re going to have to figure out how to address.”