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It is ‘vagrant duck’ season on Maui

New neighborhood noises are coming from a couple vagrant mallards. “Vagrant duck” is not a judgment, it is an official description of migrant birds that show up occasionally, for a few weeks or more, in the winter, but don’t make here home. They don’t come here every year and they don’t nest or breed. They hang out, enjoy the weather, and leave. Their barky honking at dawn and dusk gets Ele’ele’s (the dog’s) attention, (she thinks she is a bird dog).

Noise is also coming from the gated ghost towns above our neighborhood. Yards are being tidied up, pool pumps turned on and choruses of leaf blowers ring out. The vagrants return, power walking and jogging through the locked gates and down the street; the vagrants get Foster’s (the dog’s) attention (he loves people).

We call people without a house houseless. What is the word for people with a house they don’t use or have too many houses? Why are the people who give their all to make here home, but lack resources to live called vagrant, and the people that casually show up with no investment, other than money, called sir and ma’am?

On Maui, property ownership is lightly taxed and earned income is heavily taxed. This is counterproductive, profiteering from property ownership benefits offshore investors. Earned income is spent on island and benefits the community. It is time to start calling profiteering property owners vagrants and honoring those who work here.

Mike Wildberger

Kihei

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