“What I like about the idea of, say, a cabal of
Twitter employees all moving to Kailua is that
one, they bring their jobs with them, so you’re
not talking about displacement in that regard,”
he said. “But for all of the things that we want,
which is local sales tax, groceries, electric bill,
et cetera, you know, those paychecks from San
Francisco get spent in Hawaii.”
The Honolulu suburb of Kailua has been
struggling with how to manage an influx of
short-term vacation rentals. It’s where Julia
Miller, who works for a company that provides
payroll services for small businesses, her Google
employee husband and their two toddlers,
ended up last month when they left Northern
California’s dreary weather and fires.
“We do feel really grateful that we were able to
come here and be welcome,” she said. “We want
to do our part in keeping Hawaii safe.”
While the Millers plan to stay four to six months,
others are looking at Hawaii as a longer-term
remote workplace.
Software engineer Gil Tene and his wife, an
intensive care unit doctor, bought a house in
September in Hanalei, Kauai’s most desirable
beach town of multimillion-dollar homes.
They plan to split their time between Hanalei and
Palo Alto, California, so they looked for a property
with remote working in mind. They settled on a
five-bedroom house — enough rooms for Tene
to work in, his wife to see patients virtually in and
their daughter to study in.
“What you look for in a place you intend to work
from is very different than when you want to
vacation,” he said.