It wasnβt the images of flames ripping through neighborhoods in Pacific Palisades and Altadena this month that really triggered Jordan Hockerβs anxiety. It was the flood of social media posts about rent-gouging in nearby Los Angeles County communities that appeared in the days that followed.
Hocker lived on Maui when wildfires destroyed as many as 4,000 housing units in August 2023, leveling the town of Lahaina. But as an organizer with the Maui Housing Hui, a tenant advocacy group, she has been dealing with the ensuing rental crisis ever since.
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 percent 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 HawaiΚ»i had nearly doubled.... Read more
