I almost never check social media before bed, for a reason - I want to be able to sleep. But last night, I opened one of those apps, and saw a post from a woman on Maui, that had already gone viral within an hour. It’s a heart-wrenching first person account of someone trying to house the remaining fire survivors. There needs to be more awareness of these issues to make appropriate changes and get these people help, so I’m reposting her words here:
“Tonight I’m sitting with a whole bunch of puzzle pieces that don’t fit into any of the puzzles we have designed. And so I️ watch as they get discarded. It feels like witnessing a caste-system. As if they aren’t people at all. The invisible ones.
My stomach turns in knots to witness it. Tomorrow I️ have 6 more cases that will not have housing because of this round-peg-square-hole system.
It shouldn’t be any surprise that disaster relief isn’t designed for everyone but it takes my breath away… in the punch-to-the-solar-plexus-kinda-way each time I’m faced with it. I️ know we are trained to be neutral in this work but I️ cannot help but love each case I️ work with. I️ was raised by parents who taught me to see others as my own and I️ haven’t figured out a way to change that lens. They become my Aunty, my grandmother, my sister, my brother. And in this work, the system trains us to only relate to each case as a number.
❤️🩹I have a case that’s been “untouchable” because she smokes cigarettes and she has dementia. Nevermind she’s lived in Lahaina 45 years. She doesn’t have a phone. She has no family left living that we know of. She lost everything she owns except a small blue, faux-leather purse. She clutches it sometimes rubbing it the way a child does with a favorite blankie. She was nearly dead when I️ first met her… hypoxic O2 at 83 and so weak she couldn’t get to the bathroom on her own. She’s got a wild horse spirit thankfully, but not much more time to live, and tomorrow she has nowhere to go. Nowhere that will take her because she smokes (which, of course I️ wish she didn’t but my job is not to change people- it is to meet them where they are, as they are… cigarettes and all).
❤️🩹Another case helped rescue dozens of people during the fire. As you can imagine he’s deeply traumatized by the memory of those he couldn’t save. He couldn’t find his son after the fire and the stress and panic and smoke inhalation caused him to go into cardiac arrest. He went through heart surgery and lived but was diagnosed with cancer. He missed all the deadlines for the Maui people’s fund and various financial grants going around the first month. He was too traumatized and was one of the people who didn’t want to take advantage of the hotel program so he found his own housing, got a MEO grant and paid the landlord rent for 6 months. The landlord took the money and locked them out and shut off electricity destroying hundreds of dollars of food and losing his partner’s insulin (she’s diabetic). They came to me a month ago and our temporary housing runs out tomorrow.
❤️🩹 I️ have a Hawaiian grandmother of 12. 26 of her family members lost their homes in the fire. She’s a two time cancer survivor and her cancer came back last December. She’s been in and out of surgery and hospitalizations and FEMA stopped paying her rent because they lost paperwork she submitted with proof of having no income since December. She’s been at risk of eviction since March because of it and the landlord has been lacking all compassion and the stress is absolutely the worst thing she could be dealing with right now.
❤️🩹I have a veteran boat captain who has been in and out of the hospital a dozen times since the fire. He was evicted from his Kihei home because FEMA “recertification” didn’t go through. Missing one of the 12 things they made him turn in while he was in and out of the hospital just trying to stay alive. He also rescued so many people that night and the trauma he lives with is something many cannot fathom.
❤️🩹I️ have 4 Hawaiian mothers who were in various types of non-traditional housing arrangements. (Worktrade, one in a make-shift yurt, one at KHAKO low income housing (labeled pre-disaster homeless), and one in a rental paid under the table. There’s 12 children between them, the youngest is 1.5 months old with second youngest being 3 months old. None of them should be worried about housing insecurity on the land their bones are from. All of them face homelessness this week.
Disaster capitalism took a blow to my gut today as I️ walked into one of the makeshift disaster recovery centers …. It was a room full of all the big NGOs that have received millions of dollars for housing Maui fire survivors. Each table had multiple staff sitting there…. Bored… on their phones. Passing the time. One table I️ spoke to said they had 2 survivors stop by all day. In April alone there was reported to be 5 million dollars spent on EMPTY RENTALS on Maui by FEMA. I begin to imagine all the ways that 5 million dollars in funding could have been spent in the right hands. What we could do with one of those bored paid staff for a day.
For those of you not on Maui- we have hundreds of empty tinyhomes we drive past each day for the last 7 months while people sleep in cars with nowhere to go. Had the community meeting the needs of the people been at the “Roundtable” helping to inform the system design from a cultural lens -we would not be in this mess.
Instead FEMA decided to hire offshore property management companies to oversee getting thousands of rentals for their newly rolled out direct lease program. This money is taken out of Hawaii and these companies get a cut of every single rental they get into the Direct lease program/monthly. They decided they would incentivize people by giving them 3x more money for their rentals which has caused a secondary disaster as hundreds of renters have lost their homes as homeowners can’t turn down the opportunity to make 3 years of income in one year. Many of these homes have been rented since Dec/January and the offshore agency gets paid each month whether they are filled or not. So there’s not a lot of incentive to get people in quickly. It was reported that there were 500 vacant units… 5 million dollars of tax payer money flushed down the toilet in April alone😳. Some of the corruption I’ve witnessed I️ don’t dare speak of on this platform but let’s just say it’s felt more mafia /golum vibes than “relief/recovery” the deeper you get. So I️ try to keep my head down and just do the work in the invisabikity layers as much as possible.
But tonight my heart hurts from it…. Not from the work with the people… (they are what keeps me going) but from the push back and the corruption within the system. I️ had so much hope that Maui would say “No”. “No you may not replicate your capitalist oppressive systems that do not work here. No you may not use our community as a Guinea pig for your new programs. No- we will not have our community divided where those doing collective care get bullied (as if we are “on your turf” serving our community while they wait on your waiting list to get a newly trained DCM eventually)”. And it takes a lot for me to share it on this platform but I’m humbly asking for your prayers. For miracles. For there there be a way. That one of these people (at these 3 and 4 letter orgs) who are in a position to open a channel to let these people be resourced. Open the hearts and the channels. Help them to realize their privilege comes with deep kuleana. Light something in them so that they stand up and speak up rather than being complicit within these ineffective outdated systems. Allow them to change the system from the inside.
And please keep these families in your prayers. We need some miracles this week. Thank you in advance.”