Tech billionaires quietly push Hawaiians out of their homes: Why doesn’t anyone care?

An alarming act: 59-year-old billionaire Marc Benioff, founder of tech company Salesforce and owner of Time Magazine as of 2018, is quietly buying vast swaths of Hawaiian land from a rural region on the Big Island.

Originally from San Francisco, Benioff bought a home in Hawaii twenty years ago. But more recently, the large bald Benioff, who has a $10.5 billion net worth and enjoys racing around the island in his white Hummer, has bought hundreds of acres of land in Waimea, an upcountry town with a population of 10,000, all largely Native Hawaiians.

_{Is it just me, or does Benioff look like Harvey Weinstein? (Coincidence? I think not.) Photo courtesy of The New York Times.}

Locals are concerned they will be priced out of their homes. The median income for Waimea residents is $74,000. Inflation is a top concern for Hawaiians across the (colonized) state. Benioff is taking advantage of the economic situation, bidding over asking prices for homes and small businesses, gobbling up the area for himself.

An NPR journalist, Dara Kerr, reported on the troubling trend. During her reporting process, she visited one of Benioff’s homes, the mega-mansion he uses solely for office space. Kerr met two of Benioff’s assistants, an attractive man and a woman, both named Ken. (No, I am not kidding.)

_{A photo of the remote region in Waimea, Hawaii, where billionaire Marc Benioff is buying swaths of land. Photo courtesy of GoHawaii.}

After their meeting, Benioff relentlessly rang her friends and family, imploring them about her article. He then wrote to Kerr directly, demanding to know the proposed headline. And when she refused, he threatened her, saying he knew where she was was staying on the Big Island.

Meanwhile, his former boss, Bronx-born Larry Ellison, founder of another tech company, Oracle, bought 98% of Hawaii’s sixth-largest island: Lana’i, a remote island off the coast of Maui, for $300 million in 2012. After his purchase, Ellison bought the only local paper in Lana’i. There is literally no one on the ground to keep him accountable. (Hawai’i is a different world. I lived on Maui and nearly married a man with a severe drug dependency. It’s a different world.)

In February, Ellison invited former President Donald Trump for a round of golf on his personal Lanai’a course. He has hosted Elon Musk on Lana’i many times. Ellison is a board member on the Tesla board. When Musk bought Twitter in 2021, Ellison pledged $1 billion to support his comrade’s purchase.

_{Larry Ellison and an aerial shot of Lana’i. Photo courtesy of The Times UK.}

What is going on in the world? I am so scared for the future. White businessmen led by Sam Dole (founder of Dole pineapples) stole the land from Hawaiian Queen Lili’uokolani in 1893. Now, a new fleet of white U.S. businessmen are stealing the land.

I would be remiss not to mention: that Jeff Bezos recently bought a shoreside mansion on Maui, and Marc Zuckerberg is constructing a compound on his sweeping property in Kuaia.