A tight-knit Ohana in Pukalani with huge, sunny rooms and super fast internet, A weather nerd’s dream, minutes away from the upcountry horse stables, world-class surfing, kiteboarding, paragliding, mountain biking, and scuba diving. Zero minutes from the best road ride in the world.
Overview:
We are a community-focused house located in Pukalani, our family here includes a science/environment teacher at the Maui campus of UH, an environmental scientist working to protect the health of the island, a full-time philanthropy coordinator, a community doctor, and so on. We volunteer at beach and forest clean-ups, at farms, and other Maui community events. We are very social here, but have plenty of room for privacy. We collaborate on family dinners many nights, love meeting each other’s guests, and try to spend some of our off-time together at the beach or nearby hikes, but we are not a party house. Pukalani has the best weather of anywhere in Hawaii, and we are ideally situated if you want to be close to all the outdoor activities. Our home is comprised of a large group gathering and socializing space, with the very large bedrooms located on another floor, mostly away from any kitchen noise, as well as some other units that have their own private social spaces. We are lucky to have stunning bicoastal views of the sunset. This is a community-, activity-, and work-focused house, and while what you do elsewhere is your business, we are absolutely free of drug use or alcohol overuse while at home. But, as I hope comes through in the photos below, we have a lot of fun here, there is a lot of love and support in this house. Important to know: we are not a short-term rental house. We are a community of people that live here, and when openings occur, we seek people looking to contribute to the long-term health and stability of our ohana!
SOME Features:
- Giant rooms and bathrooms
- Gardening on site!
- 365 day/year sunsets
- Epic company but plenty of room for privacy
- Super fast and reliable Wifi. Gigabit internet with automatic 4G LTE failover redundancy, 10 Gbps backplane ethernet and 1 Gbps ethernet to the 8 Wifi6E high capacity, MIMO4x4 access points of the enterprise-grade mesh network
- Keyless entry, but safe enough to leave open
- Laundry on-site
- Units are furnished right now with nice appliances and high-end beds. (videos show unfurnished)
Some things to know ahead of time:
As a tight-knit community of mostly young professionals who work during the day, a good mix of Natives, locals, and transplants, we will frequently do activities together, ranging from spontaneous lawn games like spikeball, to kiteboarding, mountain biking, trail running, paragliding, snorkeling, and so on. We definitely love guests, but also are very conscious of the “chill, homey” vibe of the house.
The local cultural norms of Hawaii are a source of much discussion and confusion even among lifetime residents, but for people in their first decade here, they are quite indecipherable, so worth chatting about. Pukalani is a residential, very “local” neighborhood. It is not touristy, and this is something the local residents care very deeply about maintaining. Our neighborhood has a much more “old Hawaii” feel than the tourist spots of Lahaina or Kihei, and requires us to act accordingly. This means limiting our number of guests, absolutely keeping the noise within the house after dark, keeping the cars within neatly organized spaces and not spilling out into the road, etc. It was very recently, fresh in the memories of our older residents, that Maui was only accessible by a once-daily 12 seat plane; multi-story buildings didn’t exist, and everyone at any given beach was ‘ohana. Hawaii has changed beyond recognition for many of these people, and the traditional ways of life have eroded because of the influx of mostly-white people that come from out of state. As a result, tensions are high, and yet the spirit of aloha remains strong. It is therefore absolutely critical that we are good ambassadors to our neighbors and the broader community.
The TL;DR: is that we care deeply about making our housemates and neighbors feel good about being at home, and introducing positive guests to the community is a big part of that for us. We make sure to consider and take responsibility for how our actions impact those around us.
Pre-application procedure:
If this is something that interests you, please reach out! Basically everyone living here is related in some way or another, so if you are reading this you have probably already been here, but for consistency here are the policies we have worked out.
- Read this whole homepage
- Fill out the form at https://theorangutan.house/form
- Get to know us, and let us get to know you! Come join us for some dinner, or at the beach! Adding new members to the home is something we all have a say in and vote on. Join us and let everyone get to know you! If we all think you will be a great part of the community, you’ll be invited to formally apply.
- Check out the rooms, and see if there is availability in a room you would like. Have a chat with Vin about your plans. We have to rent long-term here, both because of the law and for the stability of the house, we are only looking for long-term and we have strong preference for longer leases.
- For everyone’s safety and peace of mind, everyone that lives here is required to go through a Transunion criminal, eviction, and background check. It costs $35, at your own expense.
- Then, we just figure out which room you want and when you can come stay!
Application procedure:
These rooms are typically in high-demand, so first reach out using the contact form below and if you are related to someone here, let them know as well. You can fill out the application form linked at the top of this page (on innago.com), where you will fill out the background check. Presuming you are approved (if you have gotten this far you’ll already have a pretty good idea), we create a lease which gets signed online. Please note that rooms can only be held for people who have signed a lease and have submitted a deposit and first month’s rent, though conceivably, rooms can be held far in the future.