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Brian Lehrer: This is the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. As the whole country is focused on the death and devastation in Maui where wildfires not only killed a lot of people but destroyed an entire city, what remains hidden and has gotten very little coverage so far, is a plot, I think we can call it a plot, among some who seek to turn this tragedy into profit. Yesterday, USA Today published a piece titled Maui Is Not For Sale.

Survivors say developers want to buy land where their homes once stood. According to residents interviewed for the piece, they're already receiving inquiries from developers seeking to purchase "the land, islanders and their families have lived on for years if not generations." Some of these inquiries are even coming through social media sites like Facebook, it's been reported. Those who remain fear that without timely government aid and intervention, neighbors will sell their ancestral lands to people who will change them forever.

This can be seen as an example of what some people call disaster capitalism. Have you ever heard that term disaster capitalism? It's actually got an Oxford dictionary definition as the practice of taking financial advantage of natural or manmade disasters and unstable social, political, or economic situations. Hawaiian Governor, Josh Green, is reportedly exploring the possibility of a moratorium, as USA Today reports, a moratorium on sales of damaged or destroyed properties. Let's hear from him directly, this clip comes from Hawaii Governor Josh Green's address to the people of the state on Tuesday.

Governor Josh Green: I've asked my attorney general to watch for predatory practices, and we will be embedding attorneys who are going to work pro bono for our people, Maui attorneys for Maui's people to be at our joint response centers available to all of us. If people have someone reach out to them to try to get their land, we will be able to get expert legal advice so that doesn't happen. If someone behaves in a predatory fashion towards one of the people that are suffering right now who have lost their loved ones or lost their home, lost their rental, and they try to buy land out from under them, you can be sure I will not be allowing anyone to build or rezone or do anything of that sort if they've taken advantage of anyone here. Rebuilding will be for our local people.

Brian Lehrer: Hawaii Governor Josh Green on Tuesday. Does this sound familiar to any of you? Can you think of another time when people who are American citizens have gone through this? How about those of you from Puerto Rico? Another American island. Maybe you have this nagging feeling right now that we've seen this before and not that long ago. Alana Casanova-Burgess who many of you know as the host of the WNYC and for Futuro Studios podcast La Brega, brought to our attention the similarities between what those in Maui are experiencing right now or might soon and what Puerto Ricans faced in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017.

We're going to take a closer look at the current situation unfolding in Maui and see what lessons can be extracted from the parallel events of the very recent past, and still ongoing, in Puerto Rico. Joining us now are Kaniela Ing, a seventh-generation indigenous Hawaiian from Maui and the national director of climate justice organization, Green New Deal Network, as well as our own Alana Casanova-Burgess. Hi Alana and Kaniela welcome to WNYC. I guess it's like five o'clock in the morning there, so thank you so much for joining us.

Kaniela Ing: I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Alana Casanova-Burgess: Hi, Brian. Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: We and most of our listeners are physically quite far away from you. Can you bring us to Maui right now, Kaniela? What does every day look like at this moment in the wake of the wildfires, and especially with respect to the looming threat of disaster capitalism?

Kaniela Ing: Sure. There are two Maui's right now. There's the Maui that the people of Lahaina are surely experiencing a lot of grief, and the process of healing just beginning. Local people generally are rising up in, I wouldn't say unprecedented ways. We always have each other's backs. This is an island. You have to if you're going to survive, especially with all the changes that we've seen, at least in my lifetime. It's just been so rapid.

Then there's the other Maui, which is just tourists, some folks just carrying on their days frolicking in the same waters that our loved ones have drowned in just a couple days ago, eating their shave ice and ice cream like nothing has happened. That's where Maui's at, a lot of sadness but also a lot of just the same old, same old, but also people coming together in really inspiring ways.

Brian Lehrer: On the business-as-usual parts of Maui, even though I'm sure this is on just about everybody's minds, I did hear a report in which Maui officials, Hawaii officials were saying, "Hey, folks, don't not come to Maui if you are planning to vacation here. Tourism is a lot of our economy and the destruction is limited to one part of the island. We don't want you saying to yourselves, 'Oh, we can't go there now because of what happened with the wildfires.' That's only going to compound the pain and suffering." Is that your view, too? Do you want to reinforce that message to people elsewhere in the country who might have a Hawaii vacation scheduled or that they're thinking about?

Kaniela Ing: No, that's not my view, and that wasn't the view of most officials, definitely not the governor or the mayor up until yesterday. There was a backlash. At first, they were saying what I'm saying, "Don't come to Maui. Now's not a good time." Then there was a backlash, but some folks in the tourism industry, and they changed their tune. The fact of the matter is there are still people sleeping in tents, sleeping in lots who just lost their homes. They should be afforded the utmost dignity.

We have limited hotel capacity. There's a federal program that's subsidizing hotels to let impacted residents sleep there, even for the medium to long term, and we're still trying to get that rolling. If you take up those hotel rooms, that's not going to happen. You're keeping these people on the streets. Everyone has their own gods and religions, I'm not one to cast moral judgment, but that's up to you. Do you want to be out here frolicking in our waters when these people lost everything and are sleeping in tents or in [unintelligible 00:07:59]?

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad we got that point of view from you because we certainly heard the other one yesterday in various national media that it would hurt the recovery effort for people to cancel their plans. You're telling us why it might hurt the recovery effort, and especially the quality of life for the survivors at least in the short term to carry on with that business as usual even elsewhere on the island. Alana, do you want to jump in here as we bring it back to disaster capitalism? Longtime listeners will remember you were on our air giving updates right after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Talk about what happened there that's relevant to this.

Alana Casanova-Burgess: Obviously, there are a lot of parallels anytime we see a huge disaster of this magnitude. I also heard on our air this morning NPR had folks from the Paradise fires in California a couple years ago talking about solidarity with Maui at this time. What I just heard about Hawaiians coming together and also this idea of how on an island you have to help each other because of the conditions and because of how hard it is to get aid from the states. We saw that in Puerto Rico, we still see it. Aid was so slow to come.

You saw so much mutual aid. We say solo el pueblo salva al pueblo, only the people help each other. I'm also thinking about the Jones Act. These are two archipelagos that rely in this case on aid coming by boats. The Jones Act requires these boats to come from the US mainland, so there's that. I'm also thinking about the housing crisis which we've just been talking about a little bit. Puerto Rico was in a debt crisis and austerity crisis before Hurricane Maria. There were these tax incentives passed in 2012 to try to get people from outside to move, to bring their business, bring their dollars, buy property. This was in the face of a huge exodus, which I understand Hawaii has also been going through. The cost of living being so high that people have to move. I've read to Las Vegas in many cases.

There were these incentives to try to get people to move to Puerto Rico, and that really kicked in a huge way after Hurricane Maria. The numbers of people moving in, of buying property that people couldn't afford to fix up after the damage from the hurricane. We've seen a housing crisis in terms of short-term rentals with Airbnbs as well, which speaks to the tourism parallel between these two places. Kaniela, it's nice to hear your voice, and I'm so sorry to hear about how you are doing and how Maui is doing. There's just so many points of comparison here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're going to invite you in, too. Some of you know, we opened the phones earlier this week for calls from people with ties to Maui and to Hawaii generally. We know that we have a big Puerto Rican community, obviously, in our core listening area in the New York City area. What do you want to share or say to one another in terms of what happens or is happening after disasters and after this disaster? In terms of the relationship of these archipelagos, as Alana just correctly pointed out that they are in geographic terms, their relationship with the United States, Puerto Rico, and its history within colonialism. Hawaii, within its history of colonialism, it wound up a state. Puerto Rico is currently a commonwealth.

Call or text us on any of this, and certainly, if you have experience with Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria with respect to disaster capitalism, like speculators coming in and trying to take advantage of the depressed value at the moment of your home or your land, call and share it. Maybe it will help people from Hawaii, from Maui avoid the same fate. 212433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. There are other examples, too. We're singling out Puerto Rico because there are so many Puerto Ricans in our audience, and because it's a recent and very clear and parallel example. 212-433-9692. Let's go right to a caller. Luis in Newark. You're on WNYC. Hello, Luis.

Luis: Hello, Brian. Thank you for doing this. I am so appreciative. The people of Hawaii do not need to go through the plight that the people of Puerto Rico are going through. After the Hurricane Maria, the devastation that was left over, the people were so vulnerable. Right now you can look, and by the way, there are some activists trying to do something about this. There are people who have, this one lady alone has 61 Airbnb apartments or rentals in Puerto Rico, in Rincón, Sabana Grande, San Juan, Río Grande, just 61.

One person. How did she do it? She went down and bought places that were devastated. She fixed them up. Listen, I have nothing against capitalism, however, this is a little bit too much. We can't allow this to happen to Hawaii as well. We need to have a movement that allows this to be stopped. Please look up. There are several other people trying to do some things about it. Just look it up. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Luis, thank you very much. Alana, before we ask Kaniela what he's seeing specifically in this respect, for you who covered Puerto Rico after Maria, does that ring true to you?

Alana Casanova-Burgess: Yes, absolutely. Even thinking about the effects of the pandemic, many people who can work remotely now moved to Puerto Rico, moved, as I understand it, to Hawaii, and that has also been driving these housing prices up. I understand that Hawaii has the highest housing costs in the country, anecdotally, and also in terms of the data, we've seen just so many people displaced from not only the metro area of San Juan, but as the caller saying, Rincón, Aguirre all along the West Coast.

It's been really shocking to see. Also, one of the differences, I think, between these two places is that in Puerto Rico, native Puerto Ricans are the majority. I don't think that's true in Maui. I think actually the population really explodes with tourism, and that population has been declining. Again, these parallels go back before these disasters, but we can see how disaster capitalism is going to is going to really threaten Hawaii and is threatening Puerto Rico as well. Thinking about--

Brian Lehrer: One more follow-up on Luis's call. He talked about all those Airbnbs being owned by one person, for example. Is it worse, if you are a tourist, to go and stay in an Airbnb than to stay in a hotel because it exacerbates a housing shortage? New York City is having that conversation about New York City even without a natural disaster. Is that also a thing on Puerto Rico as far as you know?

Alana Casanova-Burgess: Yes, people talk about that a lot. I have friends who really encourage visitors to stay in hotels. The biggest thing is a conversation around policy that's needed. I know in New York, we're always talking about the policy around limiting Airbnb rentals. That is certainly something that I think a lot of people would like to see in Puerto Rico. There's one statistic that there's an area of San Juan where 25% of the units are owned by short-term or are short-term rentals. That's incredible. Hotels are, but then you have to think about, are the hotels owned by Puerto Ricans or owned by people who have come from outside to start hotels and to profit from tourism? It's not an easy question to answer.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us or talking about the prospect of disaster capitalism, as it's known already setting in, in Maui after the wildfires there. The governor of Hawaii, Josh Green speaking out against speculators coming in and buying up land and people's homes at depressed prices for their own benefit, but making it harder for people to live and recoup either their homes or another kind of home.

We're talking about the parallels with Puerto Rico in that respect after Hurricane Maria in 2017, with our own Alana Casanova-Burgess. Host of the La Brega podcast, Puerto Rico-centric podcast, and Puerto Rican-centric podcast in general. She's reported on the disaster capitalism there. Kaniela Ing, a seventh-generation indigenous Hawaiian from Maui, and the national director of the climate justice organization, the Green New Deal Network in his day job. Inviting your phone calls if you're Puerto Rican or Hawaiian, or anyone else with experience with disaster capitalism. 212433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Kaniela, anecdotally, have you heard instances of developers approaching people you know in Hawaii on Maui with requests to buy their land?

Kaniela Ing: Yes. A friend from high school, their family, the [unintelligible 00:18:28] have said that at least eight people have contacted them with what they've called predatory offers. They're just pleading and begging that people stop. What was said earlier, this is a larger issue. It's really a matter of setting the right policies. I think Governor Green is taking some strong steps, but what the people behind it are worried about is not just outside investors, whatever that means, but just the regular developers that been forcing us into economic exile for generations now.

My family was forced to sell our home a few years ago. My mom is now renting a room in a friend's house. I'm living on another island, and I'm just going back and forth to visit my mom and friends, and grandma. That's the reality for most of us. If you graduate high school today as a local or a Native Hawaiian, there's a 95% chance you're not going to be able to stay on Maui. This is something that's been happening with local developers, well, recently, local developers. This is more of an acceleration, a trajectory that we've been on.

In terms of parallels with Puerto Rico, the original disaster capitalist hit us both right about the same time around 1898 when our Nations were essentially just swept on from under us. The original oligarchs set up shop. This is something I talk about quite often with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The parallels has always been this way. It's just when these moments hit, it's just an acceleration of a trajectory that's been ongoing.

Brian Lehrer: People are calling in with other examples when disaster capitalism followed a disaster. Here's Michael in Ann Arbor, Michigan who wants to point to one. Michael, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Michael: Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my call. I don't have personal experience with this, but I wanted to cite a classic example of disaster capitalism. This reminded me of the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia where the beaches were cleared because of the tsunami. Several of the fishermen in their small businesses and their families were prevented from moving back to the beach because developers and hotels built basically evicted all the residents there and built on the land. This is one of several examples that was cited in the book by Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, which goes through the history of several of these scenarios. It seems like a similar situation may happen unfortunately in Maui.

Brian Lehrer: Michael, thank you. By the way, Naomi Klein fans, heads up, she's got a new book coming out. She'll be on the show again in a few weeks. People are calling in with other examples, too. Somebody writes, "What about New Orleans after Katrina?" Here's Zef in Brooklyn calling in, who I think grew up in Maui. Zef, you're on WNYC. Hi, there.

Zef: Hi, Brian. First-time caller, long time listener. You're amazing. I just wanted to say I went to high school and middle school in Maui, lived there for about 10 years. I live in Brooklyn now, and a lot of people here that I talk to just have no idea how much this is just truly person-to-person community helping each other out the gate. I've been trying to stress as much as I can to fellow New Yorkers just how to donate locally and help from afar.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a preferred place to donate?

Zef: My friends on the ground say three really methods. One is Venmos of families directly holding that-- screenshotting Venmos [unintelligible 00:22:42], and holding down the QR codes to donate and splitting your budget up to a family you see and donating that way. Hawaii Community Foundation, and then the Kokua Foundation, I think.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Zef. Kaniala, do you want to add to that at all for people who are far from Hawaii, but just want to donate money to help survivors? Do you have a preferred way?

Kaniela Ing: Yes. People in Hawaii tend to be on Instagram. If you go to line of Venmo, if you just search that on the app, you'll find the spreadsheet with the families. That is the best way for direct relief, but because this conversation is focused on disaster capitalism, we realize-- My work at Green New Deal Network is about climate mitigation, but it's becoming more about these disasters.

The only fund that's focused on the longer-term rebuilding, fending off these vultures is the Maui Recovery Fund. You're going to have to build not just direct relief, but just recovery will require community power and political power, and advocating for additional female assistance, helping folks do their insurance claims, and building their own community [unintelligible 00:24:08] plan, and testifying at the city council, et cetera. That takes a different type of funds, and all the-- It's hard to raise that kind of money right now, so we are encouraging folks to give that way as well.

Brian Lehrer: I want to replay part of a call we got on Tuesday's show when we were talking about Maui. We heard from a caller native to Hawaii, Marriott, now in Manhattan.

Marriott: This is a climate disaster, but it also feels like it's a colonial disaster as a direct result of the fossil fuel and military-industrial complex that's on Hawaii. My ancestors had a system of ahupuaʻa, which was a land division, which led from the mauna, the mountain all the way to the sea. That's how it used to be divided. The water from the top of the mountain would stream down into the waters of the sea. That is how we fed our people for 100 years.

Brian Lehrer: Kaniela, I know you're deeply involved in activism surrounding climate change, and that was our primary topic in the Tuesday's segment that Marriott called in on how climate change fed even the possibility of wildfires in lush Hawaii, which to a lot of people unfamiliar with Hawaii was just so surprising. Upon hearing this call from that listener, I'm sure there's a lot running through your mind. Do you agree with her when she says that the fires in Maui aren't just a climate disaster, but also a colonial disaster?

Kaniela Ing: Lahaina Maui wasn't always a dry fire-prone region. Historically, it was lush, it was a wetland. It was the home of some of the world's earliest aquaculture systems called [unintelligible 00:25:56]. At the dawn of the 20th century, sugar barons illicitly diverted water to irrigate the lands that they had taken. Now, descendants of those barons amass vast profits from controlling our irrigation, our land use, our political influence.

The largest corporation and biggest political donor and landowner is called Alexander and Baldwin. Those are two of the original "Big Five families". They're still around today. If they didn't divert that water, if they didn't introduce invasive dry grass, Lahaina would've never burned. It's that simple. As we rebuild, it's really critical to uphold the vision of public land and water rights, returning it to the people, and restoring the harmony of nature that my ancestors knew very well.

Brian Lehrer: Alana, I wonder if now, six years out from Hurricane Maria, there are any examples of ways to stave off disaster capitalism, stave off people with a lot of money, companies with a lot of money, who want to come in and speculate by buying up land at depressed prices victimizing the people who used to live on that land or in those homes. Are there any good examples of resistance to disaster capitalism from the Puerto Rico experience?

Alana Casanova-Burgess: You'll remember, Brian, a couple of years ago, in 2019, the governor of Puerto Rico was forced out in a series of-- It was weeks of protests. That was in part because of a chat that was leaked where it just seemed very clear that the governor and the people around him were not-- not only were they offensive in the way that they talked about the dead from Maria, but they were also just really not focused on the recovery, and there was a lot of watch-dogging around that. We saw that.

Unfortunately, what happened after isn't necessarily-- He was essentially replaced by a governor who's very pro "development", I suppose. Right now, one of the biggest issues in Puerto Rico is waterfront development, beachfront development. The beaches are public by law, but there's a lot of illegal development, the purchasing of land. Really it's protests and the public trying to keep an eye on all of this.

I was also thinking, earlier we were talking about land use. There's a lot of wetlands that have been filled in to build housing developments. We see that as a parallel as well. I know that's true in other places also. Also, thinking about some of these areas in Puerto Rico and in Maui as well, there are informal deeds. It's hard for FEMA policies to really address that when that's been going on. Also, people own their homes outright.

Without a mortgage, you're not required to have insurance. In Puerto Rico, I think it was like 50% of houses were insured against wind damage. Very few, it was like single digit for flood insurance. There are all these ways that I think, hopefully, maybe we can move forward and learn from this. It's just been very difficult in Puerto Rico because the government is very much on the side of attracting foreign investment.

Brian Lehrer: Another example of disaster capitalism from New York that a listener texts, "I lived below Canal Street on 911. We had realtors buzzing our buzzer asking us to sell the next week." There's another example that will certainly resonate with a lot of people in New York. Here's a challenge to the premise. I'll throw this to both of you. Listener write, "Say there is a retired couple in Maui who have had their home destroyed in the fire. They know the trouble of construction on the island and the shortage of labor there. Are you suggesting they be forced to stay and rebuild for the next decade, or should they be able to sell the building lot and get on with their lives elsewhere?" Kaniela, what would you say to that listener?

Kaniela Ing: Yes, sell it to a local. Don't sell it to private equity. Don't sell it to BlackRock or Vanguard. Can we have policy? A lot of this is about individual acts despite certain incentives. The question is, can we set policy that will allow it to happen? Do we have the power as a community to move those policies forward? We know that the luxury developers have that power. How do we build that power while we're grieving and healing?

To the point of government is on the side of foreign investment, we need to completely change the underlying pillars of our economy. As long as we're relying on land speculation and tourism, this is going to keep happening. These are two industries that are inherently paradoxical. They rely on the preservation of our natural resources and beauty of our eyelid as well as the destruction of it. It is not sustainable. We're seeing that play out in really stark ways right now.

Brian Lehrer: On Puerto Rico to the same question, Alana.

Alana Casanova-Burgess: I completely agree, and I think in terms of long-term planning here. Yes, it has been several years since Hurricane Maria, but in Hawaii, it's only been a week. I think what's so shocking about these headlines is how predatory it is to get these calls just days after your home is lost. People are desperate, and I don't think that that's a situation under which you make the best decisions about your future. In Puerto Rico as well, people have sold their homes for a lot of money, but then those people who own those homes turn it around and rent it for even more. We know that the people who are losing out here are those who are making the decision without a policy in place to protect them.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get one more call in here. Paulina in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Paulina.

Paulina: Hi, there. I just wanted to reach out and say that there was a local developer here in New Jersey that did reach out to people in Maui. Through the power of social media, I was able to reach out to this developer, and I actually had one of the executives personally reach out to me to share that he's going to cease all contact, he's going to cease trying to get the properties and whatnot.

Brian Lehrer: How about that, Kaniela, resistance to disaster capitalism one person at a time?

Kaniela Ing: Yes, I dig it. It's also not enough. We can't rely on the altruism of developers or anyone to act against their own self-interests, especially in the long run. We're going to have to build a policy, but it is great to see people stepping up in times of need.

Brian Lehrer: We leave it there. My guests have been Kaniela Ing, a seventh-generation indigenous Hawaiian from Maui, and the national director of the climate justice organization, the Green New Deal Network, and Alana Casanova-Burgess, co-creator, host, and producer of the podcast, La Brega from WNYC studios and Futuro Studios. Thank you both very much for joining us today.

Alana Casanova-Burgess: Thanks, Brian.

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