Beyond the ban

Residents who have followed the homelessness issue might watch the high-profile discussions on keeping the sidewalks clear, and assume that’s the only thing that’s been happening. Enforcing the ban on storing private property on city property — and the latest proposal to ban lying down on sidewalks, too — continues to keep city crews busy and garner the headlines.

Behind the scenes, however, homelessness initiatives are entering a new phase, one that increasingly involves partnering government officials with church groups and other volunteers. Progress on one of Oahu’s knottiest social problems has been gradual and sometimes halting, but it’s progress all the same.

That’s the assessment of various service providers and leaders, among them Connie Mitchell, executive director of the Institute for Human Services. The sidewalk ban was supported by IHS, but the primary objective still should be helping the homeless get back on their feet and into some kind of stable living situation, including a job, Mitchell said.

"Instead of focusing so negatively, I wish there would be more attention on the energy that’s going into housing the people on the street," she said.

Colin Kippen, the state’s homelessness coordinator, points to innovations such as a waiver request that would allow Medicaid funds to cover certain job-readiness programs for the homeless.

He said he also works closely with Jun Yang, the city’s housing director.

"There’s been a substantial sea change," Kippen said. "The administration at the city has decided they’re going to play a role in moving people off the streets and into housing."

The state’s efforts include funding for rental subsidies and other assists that social service agencies match with homeless clients. The challenge is to keep state and city projects working in tandem rather than at cross purposes, said Yang.

"We want to make sure we’re faced in the same direction," he said.

Among the multiple efforts in government and nonprofit sectors:

» The city’s Housing First project, in which various units will be identified and rented for homeless clients, is moving ahead. A request for proposals just went out, said Pamela Witty Oakland, director of the Department of Community Services, and a contractor to run the program will be selected by Nov. 8.

» The national homelessness campaign known as 100,000 Homes is being led locally by the coalition Partners in Care, and is working to find homes for the most vulnerable among the homeless population, including veterans.

» The Homeless Assistance Working Group, a volunteer panel convened by state Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland, deploys "block captains" to their home communities to discover the needs of their homeless, and tap resources from the people to work on projects to property owners with land or housing units.

» The Legislature allotted $100,000 for the development of prototype, low-cost housing alternatives that can be built quickly and meet city codes (see story on page F5).

Chun Oakland chairs the Senate Human Services Committee. She said she expects that during the next legislative session, the development of rental housing aimed at a lower-income population will top the agenda in the campaign against homelessness.

"We need them for those earning 60 percent of the median area income, and under," she said. "We do have to improve people’s ability to earn and be financially responsible, but short of that, we also need to build in that range."

At present, the most visible effort being made at the city level has been enforcing ordinances banning camping and otherwise stowing personal property in parks and on sidewalks. Ross Sasamura, director of the Department of Facility Maintenance, said his crews are dispatched in response to complaints about obstructions.

The confiscated items are kept in a city holding area, and owners can first pay the $200 fine at City Hall and bring the receipt to reclaim them, he said. Sasamura declined to disclose where the property is stored, although he said that items that are being reclaimed are sent to the Halawa Corporation Yard for pickup.

Service providers, who aim to direct the homeless to assists that they need, either accompany the crews on their rounds or go out in advance, he said.

The actions have deterred some of the squatting, he said, adding that there are some areas, such as Aala Park and nearby Kuwili Street and Pawaa Park on South King Street, where the campers are especially persistent.

"From my perspective, I would say that we’ve been making progress to the extent that there are many areas that are not as obstructed as they were in the past," he said.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell had announced his support for a homelessness initiative called Housing First, an approach that provides stable permanent housing along with medical and social services, to help the chronically homeless regain independence.

A previous proposal for a Housing First complex in Chinatown was stalled due to neighborhood protest. The city now wants to try a "scattered site" version, in which individual units around the island would be secured.

This avoids some of the community opposition issue, but getting it financed was still complicated, said Witty Oakland. That’s because the $7.7 million for the two-year startup is coming from the sale of the 12 publicly subsidized rental complexes the city had run. The sale may not close until early 2014, Oakland said, but the process of finding a nonprofit to run the project is starting now.

"We want to be poised and ready to spend it as soon as the money becomes available," she said.

Of the total, $2.5 million would cover the rents and $5.2 million would be for social services and program operations, she said. The nonprofit contractor will be selected from those responding to the RFP that went out Monday, with proposals due Oct. 31.

Keith Ishida, who administers the department’s Community-Based Development Division, said scattered sites can provide more flexibility to adapt the housing to individual needs.

The whole point of Housing First is to house the most vulnerable, those who tend to cycle in and out of hospitals and jail cells and become increasingly ill on the streets. Finding the right place for them will improve the chances for recovery, he said.

Some people aren’t ready to be housed at all and may require other kinds of help and counseling first.

"The homeless person needs to feel comfortable," Ishida said. "If you ask a person to accept housing that’s foreign to them, it’s less likely that the person will accept the housing. For some people, it would take outreach and other services to get them ready to be housed.

"Nobody has any illusions that 100 percent of the housing would succeed," he added.

The work of the social service sector hit some rough patches recently because of depletion of state grants and delays in federal homelessness funds, Mitchell added, but that’s easing up now. In addition, a change in the contractor dealing with some of the most medically needy on Medicaid has complicated outreach to the homeless dealing with mental illness, she added, but that transitional problem won’t last.

Overall, Mitchell said she’s encouraged by the spirit of community involvement she’s seen, but added that volunteerism needs to be paired with perspective on what the homeless need, and where their responsibilities may lie. Some of the homeless who have moved here from the mainland or who have unrealistic expectations need to be educated, too, she said.

"We’re doing training with different churches to help them understand where compassion becomes enabling," she said.

"People from out of town need to be helped to understand our culture of kuleana," she said. "By coming to Hawaii the expectation is that you will be willing to find a job and contribute.

"Those people that are really wanting to re-establish themselves to reintegrate into the community are open to those ways, trying to recover," she said. "The key to it is assessing a person’s motivation to become a part of the community and help them to do that.

"People rise to the level of expectations that you set for them."