Hawaii is opening several investigations into people who allegedly have made unsolicited offers for property in the fire-stricken town of Lahaina in violation of a new emergency order.
“We’ve seen that in a lot of different places in our country and in our world where people have lost everything but their land and someone swoops in and buys properties for pennies on the dollar,” Green said. “We want to keep this land in the hands of local people, and we want to give them at least a chance to decide whether they’d like to build back.”
Lahaina resident Melody Lukela-Singh said she was disappointed the governor didn’t impose an outright ban as he initially said. “You know, it’s the only thing that we have left,” said Lukela-Singh, who is Native Hawaiian. She knows of three families, all Filipino, who are selling their homes and want to move away because they can’t handle the stress of seeing Lahaina burned to the ground.
The situation presents two competing interests, said Robert Thomas, the director of property rights litigation at California-based Pacific Legal Foundation. One is the U.S. Supreme Court has found people have a right to decide what to do with their property. The other is the government has an interest in making sure people aren’t preyed upon.
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