I am a doctoral-level mental health professional working with the Maui Wildfire Exposure Study and the Lahaina Certified Community Behavioral Health Center. Every day, I sit with fire survivors who are still living with the psychological aftermath of August 2023, the grief, the trauma, the displacement and the constant uncertainty about where they will sleep next month.
In recent weeks, many of my patients have been facing the very real possibility of losing their FEMA disaster housing. For individuals and families already living in survival mode, the threat of eviction was not just a logistical crisis. It was literally a mental health emergency.
That is why Gov. Josh Green’s successful effort to secure a one-year extension of FEMA disaster housing relief for nearly 1,000 individuals and families in Lahaina matters so deeply and why he deserves clear public credit for it.
I want to be transparent: I did not expect to be writing an op-ed praising an elected official. My perspective shifted after an unexpected, personal interaction.
I ran into the governor at the airport and took the opportunity — admittedly an ambush — to advocate for Lahaina and for my patients who were on the brink of losing housing. I expected irritation or deflection. Instead, he stopped, listened, asked what we needed, and gave me his personal contact information so I could keep him updated. What struck me most was that he did not perform concern — he demonstrated it. Unfortunately, this is not the experience I have had with some other politicians and decision makers in our state.
From a clinical standpoint, housing stability is not a luxury. It is foundational. When people who have survived a disaster that already took their homes, loved ones, and livelihoods are forced to confront housing loss again, the nervous system does not register as a policy issue. It registers danger. I have seen firsthand how housing instability leads to spikes in depression, anxiety, substance use, suicidal ideation, and medical destabilization. Preventing that kind of re-traumatization genuinely saves lives, even if it never appears as a statistic.
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This housing extension did not happen on its own. It required leadership willing to make difficult calls and advocate forcefully for people who no longer have the capacity, access, or political leverage to do it themselves. In a national political climate defined by polarization and paralysis, Green crossed party lines, engaged directly with federal decision-makers, and pushed for what was clinically, morally, and humanly necessary for Lahaina.
As someone working within the behavioral health response, I can say plainly that this additional year of housing stability matters. It allows survivors to remain engaged in mental health treatment, keep children in school, maintain medical care, and avoid the destabilization that comes with repeated displacement. Healing from a disaster of this magnitude does not align with election cycles or funding timelines. It unfolds over years.
There is a tendency, especially after media attention fades, to treat disaster recovery as a checklist: debris cleared, programs launched, deadlines met. But trauma does not operate on deadlines. Many of the people I work with are only now beginning to fully process what they survived. Forcing housing instability at this stage would have undone years of fragile progress.
Lahaina has experienced enough loss. We cannot afford to lose one more person to this fire. What people here need now is not rhetoric, but reliability. This housing extension sends a message that survivors are not being abandoned once the cameras move on.
As a clinician, I am trained to look for protective factors that reduce harm and support resilience. Stable housing, in my opinion, is the strongest protective factors there is. Green’s intervention strengthened that protection for nearly 1,000 households. That matters clinically. It matters ethically. And it matters to the people of Lahaina who are still rebuilding their lives one day at a time.
Christopher Knightsbridge, Psy.D., heads the mental health research team for the University of Hawaii Wildfire Exposure Study.