Nonprofits provide housing for displaced Maui residents

FILE – Search and rescue team members work in a residential area devastated by a wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii, Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. When the most deadly U.S. fire in a century ripped across the Hawaiian island, it damaged hundreds of drinking water pipes, resulting in a loss of pressure that likely allowed toxic chemicals along with metals and bacteria into water lines. Experts are using strong language to warn Maui residents in Lahaina and Upper Kula not to filter their own tap water. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

by: Myja Gary

Posted: Oct 9, 2023 / 08:00 PM PDT

Updated: Oct 9, 2023 / 08:14 PM PDT

Several nonprofit international relief organizations are helping ship modular pop-up homes to Maui, with a stop in Long Beach, to help Maui residents who were displaced by the recent fires. Thousands of residents were displaced after the Maui wildfire, considered the deadliest fire storm in the United States in more than a century, destroying more than 2,000 buildings, most of them homes.

The pre-wired, insulated and quickly assembled homes arrived in the United States from Hungary. They’ll be transported to Long Beach, arriving on Tuesday, and will then be transferred to Hawaii.

Once they arrive in Maui, the homes will become a part of Ohana Hope Village, new temporary midterm housing in Hawaii, housing nearly 250 people.

Members of Family Life Center, an established nonprofit organization of Maui, partnered with Continest LLC, a modular shelter developer based out of Long Beach, and Operation Blessing, a nonprofit International Relief humanitarian organization that is providing free trucking of the units from New Jersey to Long Beach, to help support the Ohana Hope Village and provide temporary housing to displaced residents.