Nearly half of isle residents face financial hardship

Nearly half of Hawaii’s households earn too little to cover their basic needs, even though many are holding down more than one job, according to a study released Tuesday by Aloha United Way.

AUW commissioned the “United Way ALICE Report-­Hawaii” to assess financial hardship in the islands, focusing on a group of people caught in the gap between what it costs to live here and what they get paid. “ALICE” is an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.

“Our ALICE population represents hardworking people we interact with every day, who have a job — or two or three — yet cannot afford basic necessities to remain stable and self-sufficient,” said Cindy Adams, president and CEO of AUW.

“This report really quantifies that and puts a number to our ALICE households in Hawaii and helps us understand the enormity of the situation and also the obstacles they struggle with every day,” she said in an interview. “It’s now up to us as a community to decide what we are going to do to address the issue.”

People in the ALICE category include retail and restaurant workers, child care providers, landscapers, teaching assistants, laborers and office workers.

The report showed that while 11 percent of Hawaii households fall below the federal poverty line, another 37 percent earn less than the ALICE Threshold, or “household survival budget” — for a total of 48 percent of households that fall short.

The household survival budget covers basic housing, food, transportation, child care and health care costs but does not allow for any savings.

Zi Jun Liu, a senior at McKinley High School, wasn’t surprised when he heard about the figures in the report. His father works as a cook in Chinatown, and his mother does a variety of odd jobs, including household chores.

“This really kind of relates to me and my family situation,” said Liu, who has a younger sister and lives in Kalihi. “It’s sort of amazing, the fact that despite all that they’re working, we still have this much debt. My parents are spending everything they’re making just to buy food and to pay for housing, so there’s really no way for them to save.”

The same is true for many of his peers, whose parents put in long hours and can’t get ahead, he said.

And the situation is getting worse. In 2007 the number of families below the ALICE Threshold was 41 percent, according to the report.

The report calculates the household survival budget at $28,128 annually for a single adult and $72,336 for a family of four, including an infant and a preschooler. That is far above the federal poverty level of $13,440 for an adult and $27,890 for a family of four. Data are from 2015.

The household survival budget is considered a more realistic measure of what is needed to make do in Hawaii, while the federal poverty level is used to determine eligibility for government programs.

This is the first ALICE study conducted in Hawaii, although similar studies have been done in a dozen other states. The report was supported by the Bank of Hawaii Foundation, Hawaii Community Foundation and Kamehameha Schools.

“Many people would ask, ‘Why Kamehameha? Why are you interested in this?’” said Lauren Nahme, vice president of strategy and innovation for Kamehameha Schools, at a news conference at the Capitol unveiling the report.

“We know that, along with our educational colleagues, in order for kids to be at their best, to do well in school, the family foundation is really, really important,” she said. “While finances aren’t the only thing that drive a stable family, we do know that it has a huge impact if we’re talking about basic needs.”

“As this struggling group approaches the majority of our population in Hawaii, it cannot be ignored by any sector, any citizen here in our community,” she said.

The report noted that 62 percent of jobs in Hawaii pay less than $20 an hour. And low-skilled job growth is expected to outpace that of medium- and high-skilled jobs into the next decade, it said.

Adams sees the report as a “call to action for each of us.” One tactic she and her colleagues hope will be expanded at this year’s legislative session is a homelessness prevention effort that has been proved to work: short-term assistance to families facing eviction.

The Coordinated Statewide Homeless Initiative served 4,944 people in 1,610 households across the state last year, 72 percent of whom were in the eviction process.

“For many of them it was because they had encountered a one-time unexpected expense — health care, maybe their rent went up a little bit, their car broke down, maybe they were out of work for a couple of weeks,” Adams said. “They put food on the table and fell behind on their rent and needed a little bit of help.

“Although the grant allowed us to support these households for up to three months, for the vast majority of them, it was just over one month of support,” she said. “They didn’t take advantage of three months.”

Of the households assisted on Oahu during their eviction process, only 3 percent became homeless after six months, she added.

The ALICE study is online at auw.org.