Arica Lynn Souza knew she was running out of time.
It was August 2023, and she was nervously watching as a wildfire inched ever closer to her idyllic oceanside town of Lahaina in West Maui. She was home with her two children and pregnant with a third, waiting for her husband, Matthew, to return from work before making an escape. But as smoke engulfed their house, Ms. Souza couldn’t wait any longer. She stuffed her 4-year-old son, Silas, and her 2-year-old daughter, Ayla, underneath her shirt and drove down barricaded roads to safety. Matthew, who was stuck in standstill traffic, watched from his car as the fire destroyed his town, killing 102 people in the process.
The family spent a year living in Matthew’s grandmother’s house in another part of Maui. But when she died in mid-2024, the house went on the market, and the Souzas had to find another place immediately. Before the fire, they’d lived in affordable work force housing, thanks to Ms. Souza’s job as a public school teacher. Now, they were using insurance money to rebuild. Maui’s skyrocketing prices put renting out of the question. “I was worried we were about to be homeless,” Ms. Souza said.
Then she heard about an experimental housing development on the edge of Lahaina for people who, like her family, had not gotten federal assistance. Backed by $185 million in funding from the state of Hawaii and the Hawaii Community Foundation, Ka La‘i Ola — translated as “the place of peaceful recovery” — is a temporary community of 450 modular homes that will house as many as 1,500 wildfire victims through 2029.
Disaster survivors are often cycled through far-flung shelters, hotels and short-term lodging, while facing federal requirements that disqualify millions of people from aid. Ka La‘i Ola represents a new model. Since the Trump administration made cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it’s also a test of what happens when states try to fill in the gaps.
Ms. Souza worried about returning to the site of so much loss. But in August last year, without options, the Souzas packed up and returned to Lahaina.
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