"Residents with insurance or government aid may get funds to rebuild, but those payouts could take years and recipients may find it won't be enough to pay rent

"Residents with insurance or government aid may get funds to rebuild, but those payouts could take years and recipients may find it won't be enough to pay rent or buy an alternate property in the interim." And there's the problem. There's no slack in the existing housing system so there's nowhere for people to be temporarily "displaced" even for people who did everything right and had insurance and savings. So people will absolutely take the quick-money offer made by people who have bought themselves that flexibility elsewhere (e.g. a buyer who lives on the mainland and who can live in their existing house while helping to turn Hawaii into a second-house state). Because we are so wound up in what housing means to our finances and culture, there's no political will to fix this even as climate change worsens. So, like always, people with lesser means--even people with lesser means who did everything correctly--still get screwed.