This holiday season, Jesica Cadiam Standley, a Maui fire survivor, is grateful to have a place to call home for the holidays.
Standley, a single mother of eight, earlier this month won the lottery for one of the units at Kaiaulu o Kuku‘ia, an affordable, 200-unit housing development in Lahaina.
CVS, which operates Longs Drugs in Hawaii, contributed about $17.5 million in equity investments toward the project, in collaboration with Ikaika ‘Ohana, a local nonprofit, Urban Housing Communities and Hunt Capital Partners.
The project was under construction prior to the Lahaina wildfire last August, and was able to resume as none of the buildings were seriously damaged. CVS says it is the first new permanent housing on the island since the fire.
So far, families have moved into about 40 units, and 88 are expected to be moved in by the end of the month, according to CVS. The rent ranges from about $700 to $2,000 per month.
After having lost her Lahaina home to the fire, Standley and her family have been moving from hotel room to hotel room, and more recently, renting a two- bedroom apartment for more than $3,000 outside of Lahaina, which resulted in challenges getting the kids to school on time.
Now they have a place to call home in Lahaina, less than a mile where Standley was born and raised.
“We’re so grateful and so happy,” said Standley. “It’s been a long road since the fire … The kids are super excited, and just overjoyed.”
The Christmas tree is decorated and stockings hung, and it finally feels like home. Last year, Standley said they were in a hotel room, and did not put up a Christmas tree.
She still remembers Aug. 8, 2023, the day of the wildfire, as if it were yesterday.
Standley lived in Kuhua Camp, where many residents perished after wildfire quickly engulfed the area. She has told the story dozens of times, and still remembers all the details.
Early that morning, her grown daughter, who lived in a nearby apartment with a sibling, texted her to say she had a dream about a fire, with the wind blowing and a dog barking.
Throughout the day, her daughter kept calling to say there was indeed a fire, and that she should watch out for it.
As the fire closed in later that day, Standley remembers exactly where she was at 3 p.m. — sitting at the kitchen table — when she heard a neighbor across the street screaming.
“As I open my lanai doors, I could feel the heat,” she said. “Then I started yelling, ‘Get in the car!’”
She gathered her younger children, along with three from the neighborhood that were over playing that day, jumped in the car and drove away. She did not have time to gather any items, including her wedding ring inside the house.
She remembers that there were two exits from her neighborhood, and that, “we went right.” That decision would perhaps make the difference between life and death, she said, due to the traffic that came to a standstill on the other side, blocking the way out.
In her mind, Standley said, “I kept thinking to myself, we’re going to come back.” After all, the family had experienced a fire in 2018, and had been able to return to their home.
She remembers as they drove, how a set of dark clouds settled over Lahaina.
“It just eclipsed the sun,” she said. “It just got to this eerie, black darkness.”
Standley would come to realize she would never be able to return, as her home burned down in the fire that day, taking more than 101 lives and destroying thousands of buildings, including historic Lahaina town.
Standley, who lost her husband in 2021, has eight children ranging from ages 8 to 31, the eldest of whom lives in Honolulu. She is grateful all were accounted for and survived the fire.
Having a permanent place to call home, alongside many fellow Lahaina survivors and close to schools and her work, has been a relief, she said, and feels like “somewhere where we belong.”
“To have something that’s affordable, it’s just a weight off your shoulders,” she said. “It’s almost like you have your dignity back.”
Still, she expects a long road ahead to recovery, for survivors as well as all of Lahaina.
CVS, with the help of dozens of volunteers from the University of Hawaii Maui College, put together “welcome home” gift baskets for the new residents of Kaiaulu o Kuku‘ia last week with air filters, cookware, towels, children’s night lights and other household items.
CVS Health also invested $17.3 million with The Kobayashi Group, The Ahe Group and CREA LLC to build 169 affordable housing units at Parkway Village in Kapolei, which is to bring over 400 affordable rentals to the community.
CVS says equitable access to stable housing is one of the barriers to better health. Both affordable home projects are also expected to offer tuition-free preschools.
