In the wake of the 2023 Maui wildfires, the Lahaina Community Land Trust (LCLT) is redefining recovery by returning to the Hawaiian roots of wealth, or waiwai. With a focus on collective well-being, LCLT prioritizes community over profit, shifting away from extractive disaster recovery models and into something regenerative and long lasting.
“The word for water in Hawaiian is wai, and the word for wealth is waiwai,” Autumn Ness told us during a call about the formation of the Lahaina Community Land Trust (LCLT) in the wake of the 2023 Maui wildfires.
However, this version of wealth is a stark contrast from the common Western understanding.
“Waiwai [pronounced vye-vye] isn’t just about money,” Autumn said. “Waiwai is also the family who doesn’t have to work four jobs between two parents to make ends meet. Waiwai is also having the time to go to your kids’ baseball game.
“So when we talk about building wealth through LCLT, we’re talking about wealth as a very different thing. We’re talking about building collective wealth.”
The goal of the Lahaina Community Land Trust is to grow and nurture community wealth in Lahaina and the broader island of Maui. For Autumn and the team at LCLT, this stems from a deep sense of responsibility to protect Hawaiian land from exploitative actors who seek to extract as much money from Hawaiian land as they can—and without care for who is displaced in the process.
Despite being separated by an ocean and thousands of miles, Autumn’s strong dedication and love for her community could be felt loud and clear.
A lack of financial resources, skyrocketing insurance prices, and years of systemic marginalization and oppression across Maui and the Hawai’i islands at large has led to a dramatic spike in local poverty levels and the mass displacement of Native Hawaiians long before the fires even came.
However, if there’s one thing we can say with certainty after working alongside Lahaina Community Land Trust and our network of Maui-based nonprofit partners through GlobalGiving’s Hawaii Wildfire Relief Fund: Maui has an exceptional amount of Waiwai.
“[The 2023 Maui fire] wasn’t a fire that started in a forest and got out of control. It was a fire that started in a neighborhood because of archaic infrastructure in a community that has been screaming at its county and state and water leadership that, ‘We have extracted our way into a tinderbox,’” Autumn said.
“And then an entire town burned down and over ten thousand people were left without homes and options. This led to people living in hotels for months, being shuffled around constantly by insurance companies.”
While many in the community were consumed with meeting each other’s immediate needs after the fires, a core group of longtime Lahaina residents knew they were also up against profiteers more interested in exploiting this disaster for their own gain than in nurturing Lahaina back to life.
“I could literally feel a clock ticking inside of me every time I saw a property listed.”
At the time of our call, scheduled the week of the one year anniversary of the fire, Autumn told us that many community members are living in fear of eviction from their temporary rentals, housing, or needing to sell their properties.
“I read The Shock Doctrine—disaster capitalism is a whole thing. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s only a thing because the people who have signed up for the capitalism and wealth extraction model are the ones making the decisions. But we can counter that with disaster collectivism,” Autumn shared.
“Lahaina has pioneered a new model for disaster recovery that shifts focus from charity to change,” Kaniela Ing, Founder of mutual aid and advocacy organization, Our Hawaii, shared for Time Magazine. “This model has sparked one of the most impactful responses to disaster seen in modern times by not just aiding, but empowering impacted people to lead their own recovery efforts.”
It is common knowledge that wealth makes a world’s difference in disaster prevention and recovery. While nothing progresses recovery and fortifies resilience like tangible funding, Maui’s community members are teaching the world an immense amount about the power of the intangible through unity, community organizing, and people-centered progress.
With a housing crisis decades in the making plaguing the island, that same group of longtime Lahaina residents moved quickly to address their community’s most pressing need in the immediate aftermath of the fires: long-term housing.
Only days after the fires were extinguished on Maui, the team began gently engaging the community in conversations that eventually led to the establishment of the Lahaina Community Land Trust.
“A land trust is a structure that takes land off the speculative, profit-driven market for various purposes. When a land trust purchases or acquires land, that [purchase] lasts forever. Lahaina Community Land Trust was formed because, even pre-fire, the Lahaina community was subject to severe resource and wealth extraction that was leading to the long term degradation of its environment and the displacement of generational families of Lahaina, Native Hawaiian families, and the very people in Lahaina who know best how to care for its landscape. Ironically, they were the ones most at risk for displacement,” Autumn explained.
“This fire didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s the result of decades, generations of extraction of water and resources.”
“A generation ago, the people who ran Lahaina and who owned homes and businesses in Lahaina were of that place. They could tell you stories of the winds and waters, when the fish ran, and what trees were where,” Autumn said.
“The majority of the people that replaced them were people who look at Lahaina as a piggy bank—people who don’t know where the water and the winds and the fish are, or know where the trees used to be. And so, that [extraction] sped up.”
“LCLT recognized the fire could either be the final nail in the coffin for most of our Lahaina families, or we could use this horrible situation to respond to the fire in a way that not only keeps people here in the short term, but affects generations from now.”
Setting up a land trust usually takes around five years. However, Autumn and her community were not afforded the luxury of such time. Together, they reached out to other Indigenous-led land trusts, organizations and leaders across the country prioritizing anti-displacement and brought these actors on as consultants. As a result, LCLT has accomplished “what literally feels like five years worth of work in ten months,” Autumn shared.
Through the purchase of land for local Maui residents, LCLT provides landowners an alternative to selling their property to profit-driven investors. This transformational housing model provides fertile ground for bold, community-driven housing projects. Why? Because homes built on trust-held land are available to Lahaina families at rates they can actually afford.
Trust-held land is protected by governing and advisory members of the LCLT, whose collaboration and collective knowledge sustain the long-term health of the land, as well as determine its ongoing use in the community.
“The whole reason a community land trust exists is to put the people who need to be a part of Lahaina’s rebirth in a stable place where there is land and a home for them, and where they can continue in a role of stewardship over their community,” Autumn shared.
And just days before we sat down to meet, LCLT celebrated the purchase of their first community-owned parcel of land on the one-year anniversary of the fire.
“Individuals stand no chance [on the market], but together, collectively, we can keep land in Lahaina hands.”
“If we think five generations down the line about what kind of Lahaina we want for our grandkids, [we need to ask] who needs to be here to guide that? The answer to that question is almost always a generational Lahaina family, or someone who is a lineal descendant of this place.
They have the knowledge and connection to place that you just cannot buy.
If we do things right and create a stable place for those people to stay, the kind of Lahaina that gets rebuilt is not this de-watered, extracted place where the wealthy come to play. It’s a place that is green, that produces food, where the old waterways are running and local families, the descendents of this place, are thriving.
Fire doesn’t burn that kind of town. That’s the whole reason LCLT exists: to put different people in charge,” Autumn tells us.
“So many agencies have really put locals through the ringer, even when trying to do the right thing. There’s so many promises that are made and broken. We sit in rooms—especially with community elders— who have just watched their town be used up and all their neighbors and family move away. We see their doubt,” Autumn said.
“But then, something happens. We actually buy land.”
And it doesn’t stop with buying land—the LCLT also puts the community in charge of how that land should be used and managed. “We spend a lot of time talking to people about what a land trust is, and what the responsibility of owning land is,” Autumn told us.
“When we start talking about the collective, we have a chance. It is not a fast process, but it’s been so beautiful. I don’t expect people to just automatically trust that this is going to work. But I’m really excited to watch the [realization that this change is possible] happen on a collective scale.”
“That’s what I love so much about the Lahaina Community Land Trust’s model.
We take this extractive model we’ve all been taught as a measure of success [and transform it] into something regenerative.”
“The purpose of owning land is not to extract as much wealth as possible or build equity. We have to start thinking collectively. We have a role here to think about land and who owns it,” Autumn said.
The LCLT isn’t alone in its pursuit of a Lahaina-led recovery. The LCLT is one of twenty-one partners receiving support from the GlobalGiving Hawaii Wildfire Relief Fund. They work alongside other organizations like the Kula Community Watershed Alliance, the first true neighborhood-led watershed alliance and restoration project formed days after the fires ceased. Our Hawaii, in partnership with Lahaina Strong, continues to strengthen a network of advocacy, fighting for Lahaina’s rights and autonomous decision making. Maui Rapid Response is turning the nonprofit structure on its head, pioneering a new financial assistance program built from the fabric of mutual aid. You can learn more about the Hawaii Wildfire Relief Fund cohort in our most recent report.
Autumn sighed as she shared one final thought with us, our call coming to a close,
“I can’t think of an existential environmental crisis that cannot be solved by reinstating the Indigenous wisdom of the place. Not a single one.”
The collective action of Maui’s communities in response to the fires is setting a new precedent for recovery around the world. While this headway could not be made without the commitment and dedication of Maui’s people, funding is still critical to further support their efforts.
“It’s glaringly obvious that returning to the values of the indigenous people of Hawaii and creating stable places for them—where they cannot be displaced from their own home—is the solution.”
At GlobalGiving, we’re proud to partner with organizations like LCLT, that work tirelessly to holistically reclaim their communities’ homes, land, and wealth. By doing so, they are posed to transform our collective future.
Please consider sharing or donating to Lahaina Community Land Trust or the Hawaii Wildfire Relief Fund to help dismantle decades of disaster capitalism and support disaster recovery rooted in collectivism.
Featured Photo: Support LCLT by Lahaina Community Land Trust
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