Lahaina residents struggle to pay mortgages after wildfire disaster
By Arielle Argel
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LAHAINA, Hawaii (KITV) — The first of the month is coming up, which means rent or mortgage payments are due. For Lahaina resident Sharon Bryson, she and her husband have been dreading the thought of paying bills after they became unemployed due to the wildfires.
“The question for us is how are we going to pay the bills? How are we going to pay our mortgage? We have a condo we just bought in March, and when prices were going way up, so we have a decent mortgage that we have to figure out how to pay,” said Bryson.
Bryson and her husband have been collecting unemployment to make ends meet. Many of Bryson’s friends have lost their homes to the fire, so she has been housing some of them at her condo on top of making her payments.
“I’m going to seek out some more jobs and just try and bridge the gap until tourism comes back to West Maui, which we really don’t know when that will be,” said Bryson.
Bryson said she and her husband don’t qualify for help from FEMA or for other government aid because they have homeowners insurance.
Hawaii Community Lending (HCL), a nonprofit mortgage lender, said the first step to getting help is contacting or writing a letter to your mortgager.
“From what I know is that they do allow the forbearance for the three months,” said Trisal Luna-Calvin, HCL home assistant fund manager. “Servicers are not going to be or mortgage lenders are not going to be up front and forward about that, so they do need to reach out. And I know with everything happening so fast they may not think about it, but they will need to reach out themselves because servicers may not be willing to do it for them automatically.”
Luna-Calvin said that there may be fees while people are not paying, but there should be enough time to help Lahaina residents figure out future payments during that time frame.
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