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DENNIS ODA / STAR-ADVERTISER
Some 78 percent of the homeless living along Olomehani Street in Kakaako say they are willing to move into a shelter, a survey finds, but more than a third lack the necessary identification to get a job or permanent housing.
A planned August sweep of the Kakaako homeless encampment is on hold as Gov. David Ige and Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell pore over disheartening data that show the 293 people living in tents and tarps near the University of Hawaii’s medical school and Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center have few housing options.
Even though an overwhelming 78 percent of the Kakaako homeless are willing to move into a shelter, “there is virtually no shelter space for families” anywhere on Oahu, Ige said at a news conference Monday following the fourth meeting of his Governor’s Leadership Team on Homelessness.
A survey of the encampment conducted the week of Aug. 3 shows that 124 of the homeless occupants — or just less than half of the entire homeless population in Kakaako — belong to 31 families.
More than a third — or 36 percent — also do not have a picture identification or other ID such as a birth certificate or Social Security card that’s necessary to get a job or permanent housing.
HOMELESS SURVEY STATSThe Kalihi-Palama Health Center and Waikiki Health conducted a survey during the week of Aug. 3 in Kakaako. A total of 293 persons were surveyed. Only one-third of those surveyed were Micronesian immigrants. Source: City and County of Honolulu 31 Families Single adults 78% 40% 36% $320 $587 |
The survey was conducted by the Kalihi-Palama Health Center and Waikiki Health, which operates the Next Step Shelter near the Kakaako encampment.
In addition, the survey found that the average single adult living among the tents and tarps in Kakaako earns $320 per month in either income or government aid. The typical family brings in $587 per month in aid or income, which is “not enough money to sustain somebody in a household in Hawaii at this time,” said Greg Payton, chairman of Partners in Care, a coalition of 30 nonprofit providers dedicated to ending homeless on Oahu.
Caldwell is willing to start giving notice to the first homeless people who will be subject to a sweep, a practice the mayor prefers to call “compassionate enforcement.” But Caldwell has agreed to “a brief pause” at Ige’s request, said mayoral spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke.
The results of some parts of the Kakaako homeless survey were a surprise, said Jason Espero, director of Waikiki Health’s Care-A-Van program.
A third of the homeless in Kakaako are Micronesian immigrants, and the majority are Native Hawaiians or Polynesians.
“We thought it was the other way around,” Espero said.
Two members of Ige’s homeless leadership team — state Rep. Sylvia Luke, chairwoman of the House Finance Committee, and state Sen. Jill Tokuda, chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee — have been looking at land and buildings from Kakaako to Mapunapuna as possible sites to relocate some of the Kakaako homeless.
Luke (D, Punchbowl- Pauoa-Nuuanu) and Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe) said they’re particularly interested in an unused maintenance shed in the Kakaako encampment that belongs to the Hawaii Community Development Authority.
It would have to be refurbished, but it has running water, bathrooms and showers and could house up to 40 people, including families, Ige said.
But that still leaves the question of where to put the other 253 people currently homeless in Kakaako.
“Hawaii is in the unique economic situation where there is simply not enough ready or available affordable housing for the number of people in Kakaako, let alone the total number of individuals and families living in similar situations in other areas on Oahu,” Leslie Uyehara, director at Kalihi-Palama Health Center’s Health Care for the Homeless Project, said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, city officials toured the Sand Island location of a proposed transitional housing facility to be made out of 25 refurbished shipping containers.
After the first nine containers go up in late October, the first of a planned 85 single adults and couples could begin moving into them in early November, Caldwell said.
