Recent wildfires in Maui have destroyed 3,000 homes and businesses, making an already serious homelessness problem worse.
Maui Rescue Mission has been serving the unhoused community in Maui for seven years and hopes to bring on more staff to help with the expected increase in homelessness.
Maui Rescue Mission was co-founded by Santa Ynez resident Brian Nelson, who designed the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission, which provides 200 unhoused men and women with shelter each night.
When he found out that Maui County has the highest number of homeless people per capita, he decided along with his business partner, John Savage, to try to help. They visited Maui 30 times in three years and interviewed homeless people to find out what they needed.
After research, they created a mobile rescue mission that provides free showers, laundry machines, cellphone charging stations, hygiene products, and transportation to necessary resources.
“That’s one of the things that we really enjoy seeing, is a change in their mental capacity and mental state when they go into the shower and when they come out,” Nelson said.
Many nonprofit organizations will provide clothing to those in need, but without a way to wash them, many of the clothes get thrown away once they’re too dirty.
“By providing the shower, the washer and dryer, we’re able to wash their clothes and they get to use them again,” Nelson said. “So that helps with not polluting the beaches and bushes.”
Nelson said that most of the individuals they served regularly have gone missing since the fire.
“We don’t know what happened to them,” Nelson said. “We have only found maybe a dozen out of the 100, so we don’t know where they are. We are searching.”
Nelson suspects that some of the missing people they serve have gone to other parts of the island or they’ve been put in hotel rooms along with other residents who lost their homes. However, only time will tell.
As of Thursday, authorities said there are hundreds of people missing in Maui. There are 115 confirmed deaths, and the number is expected to grow.
Nelson said not being able to find the people they usually see every week has caused a lot of emotional distress for their team.
“They can’t find them and they don’t know if they survived or didn’t survive, and it’s very stressful that way,” Nelson said.
Nelson and his board of directors, who all work with Maui Rescue Mission as volunteers, are already making plans on how best to help the unhoused in Maui in the coming months. They plan to hire four or five more employees in order to expand their operations.
“We want to go six or seven days a week, and be able to reach out to all the different areas of the island,” Nelson said.
Right now, the shower and laundry services are available twice a week — Wednesdays at Lahaina Baptist Church from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Thursdays at Kanaha Beach Park in Kahului from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“For the homeless, they really enjoy the camaraderie,” Nelson said. “I have heard from the homeless themselves that they really enjoyed coming and seeing all their friends and having fellowship with them, and all the services that are there.”
