It took over a week to find a family who fit well with the place where he was offering housing.

And it also took time for groups like Maui Rapid Response, where his sister Holly Badr-El-Din was volunteering with their housing team, to collect data from people who could offer housing and those who needed it.

“Volunteers would then painstakingly pour over spreadsheets and manually try to match up renters and landlords,” Jachowski said.

When volunteers had to go back to work, the effort halted.

Jachowski

A Maui-born software developer, Jachowski said he knew he could simplify the matching process. That’s how he got the idea for Maui Hale Match, a website that tries to match renters with properties for long-term housing.

“Initially, my goals in sharing the data was to inform landlords how much rent our families can afford,” Jachowski said in an email last week. “However, seeing the scope of our housing problem — both the staggering number of people who still need long-term housing and the size of the rental gap (excluding all of the most expensive rentals), I realize that it is my kuleana to share this data with everybody in government and the large organizations who are crafting our short-, medium-, and long-term housing solutions now.”

The program had a soft launch on Oct. 5 and officially launched on Oct. 7. It allows potential renters to input information such as where they want to rent, what type of rental they are looking for, how much they are willing to pay and other details that could include wanting to be near an elementary school and if they were displaced by the fires.

Landlords also input information, such as where their rental is located, the number of bedrooms and the monthly rent. They then get a list of potential tenant matches and can choose whom to “push” or offer their listing to, Jachowski said.

If the potential renter agrees to pursue a housing offer, only then will names and contact information be shared.

In addition to matching landlords and tenants, the website also collects data highlighting the difference between what landlords are listing and what people can pay.

Median market rents advertised for homes on Maui are around $700 to $1,500 higher per month than what families say they can actually afford.

According to Maui Hale Match, the median market rent for a two-bedroom home is $3,495. Families looking to rent a place of this size say they can afford $2,400, which is a difference of $1,095.

The median market rent advertised for a three-bedroom home is $4,500, while the median requested rent is $3,000 — a difference of $1,500, Maui Hale Match shows.

“It’s really sad,” Jachowski said.

The current market rent statistics were put together after Jachowski scoured Craigslist, Trulia and Realtor.com for all active Maui long-term rental listings on Oct. 9. Information was collected from 136 Maui long-term rentals.

The statistics on what renters can pay are updated as more people join in on Maui Hale Match.

Jachowski said that he’s heard someone say if they were displaced by the fires, they would just move away “because it just seems so hopeless.”

“We need government to step in to fill that rent gap,” Jachowski said on Tuesday.

He added that the reopening of tourism in West Maui may have also led to the high rent prices, as he spoke to a landlord who said they would preferably rent to fire survivors first, but only if they could pay the $10,000-a-month rent that the owner could get from tourists.

Alan Lloyd, an organizer with the Maui Tenants Association, said he, too, has been tracking rental prices through the website Zillow since the fires. The association is an outreach project of the Hawai’i Workers Center.

“You can see the rental prices over a period of time and I have at least 5 examples of rental price increases during the moratorium,” he said in a text, alluding to Gov. Josh Green’s emergency proclamation that prohibits raising rents on Maui during the proclamation period.

Lloyd thinks landlords are increasing rental prices due to the FEMA financial aid some fire survivors may be receiving.

He added that the rental gap between what folks can pay and what is being offered “has got worse since the fire.”

Lloyd said there were evictions of renters soon after the fires as landlords may have wanted to move relatives in.

Some renters were also evicted due to the homes being sold, he said.

Maui County Council Member Tasha Kama, who chairs the council’s Housing and Land Use Committee, said the numbers are a reflection of the current housing struggle.

“The self-reported data confirms what is already painfully clear — that the critical lack of housing has led to higher rents for the few housing units that are available,” Kama said in an email Tuesday evening.

She added that “the best solution for this problem is to build more housing.”

“Now that we have lost so many homes in the wildfires, it is even more important that we approve the housing proposals made to council, at all economic levels,” Kama said.

“I recognize that it takes time to build new housing,” Kama added. “In the interim while approved projects are being built, the county needs to work closely with FEMA to use federal grant funds to help subsidize rental costs for those displaced by the wildfires. Unfortunately, doing so runs the risk of locking in the higher rent amounts until the market has a chance to adjust after more units are built. But I am hopeful that property owners will show aloha to those who have experienced life-changing losses by not stooping to rent gouging.”

In the wake of the fire, government officials also tried to connect displaced residents with temporary housing. In August, Gov. Josh Green and the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation launched the “Hawaii Fire Relief Housing Program” that allowed landlords across the state to share units available for rent and contact information for tenants. HHFDC is under the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, which declined comment on the Maui Hale Match website since it is not their program.

When it comes to getting help for a rental, DBEDT said it is referring people to the Maui Strong website, which includes various programs such as the Hawai’i Realtors Association Disaster Relief Assistance, Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement and Department of Hawaiian Home Lands kupuna rental subsidy program, along with Ka Hale A Ke Ola’s Rental Assistance Program and Family Life Center housing assistance. The information can be found at www.mauinuistrong.info/resource-categories/housing.

Data collected on Jachowski’s website offers a glimpse of the housing need. By around 1 p.m Tuesday, there were 492 housing requests, with 1,599 total people looking for a place to stay, according to Maui Hale Match.

Of that total, 409 of the housing requests were due to people losing their housing in the fire, 20 were evicted due to the fire, 17 lost income due to the fire and seven were previously unhoused. Another 39 cited “other reason” for needing housing.

Reporting their current housing situation, 263 people requesting housing said they were in a hotel, 69 said they were with family and friends, 45 were in short-term rentals, 44 were staying in an Airbnb, 32 marked “other” housing situations, 25 were currently unhoused, 11 were in long-term rentals and three were in the state-sponsored Pu’uhonua o Nene temporary shelter for Maui wildfire survivors who were experiencing homelessness before the disaster.

The top three places people wanted to rent were in West Maui (384 requests), Central Maui (210) and South Maui (148).

Since the site launched, 30 families have made contact with landlords, though Jachowski’s not sure how many have led to leases.

He said that 40 homeowners, landowners or property managers have signed up on the site, with some offering multiple properties.

Jachowski has volunteered to put up the site, updating it and paying for it at a cost of around $300 a month.

Nicole Huguenin, co-director of the nonprofit Maui Rapid Response, adopted the project and has been providing support.

Jachowski also aims to put the website in Spanish, Tagalog and Ilokano.

For more information, visit mauihalematch.org.

* Staff Writer Melissa Tanji can be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.