Help give at-risk families stability

Sure, visitors now touching down from frigid mainland states and elsewhere envy our easy access to world-class shorelines and year-round T-shirt weather. But the truth is Hawaii is a cruel paradise for a growing number of residents.

Nearly half of the Aloha State’s households are earning too little to cover everyday basic needs — even though many residents are holding down more than one job, according to a study released Tuesday by Aloha United Way (AUW). Living paycheck to paycheck — and without even a thread-bare safety net for emergencies — doesn’t leave much time for toes-in-the-sand enjoyment of the islands.

The AUW rightly intends to use the report, which underscores harsh realities tied to Hawaii’s high cost-of-living issues, to inform advocacy and guide allocation of resources to struggling households. Elected state and county government officials sizing up related policy should follow suit.

The nonprofit’s commissioned ALICE Report-­Hawaii (“ALICE” is an acronym for Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed) zooms in on precariously situated people in the workforce. While 11 percent of Hawaii households fall below the federal poverty line, another 37 percent earn less than the “ALICE Threshold,” for a total of 48 percent that are failing to safely make financial ends meet.

While the poverty line does not factor in cost-of-living, the ALICE Threshold does through a “household survival budget” limited to basic housing, food, transportation, child care and health care costs. The average annual survival budget for a four-person family living in Hawaii is $72,336. That translates to an hourly wage of $36.17 for one parent or $18.09 per hour if both parents work. That budget for a single adult here is $28,128, which requires an hourly wage of $14.06.

The trouble is that while Hawaii is now marking months of record low unemployment, many of the job openings are of the low-paying service sector sort, with hourly pay hovering around the state’s minimum wage of $10 and change. What’s more, low-skilled job growth for at least the next several years is expected to outpace that for medium- and high-skilled employment.

While the state’s tourism industry is thriving on the heels of a record-breaking streak in 2017 — more than 9 million arrivals and billions in visitor spending — its jobs inventory is not keeping pace with our rising cost-of-living price tag. State and county leaders must continue to push for further development of other promising industries, such as those emerging in the innovation and technology sector.

The push that started four years ago when the state-run HI Growth Initiative took shape has potential to bring more jobs that are low-impact in terms of the environment and high-impact in terms of better paycheck opportunities.

The ALICE report noted that 62 percent of jobs in Hawaii pay less than $20 an hour, and among the people falling into the threshold gap group are: retail and restaurant workers, child care providers, landscapers, teaching assistants, laborers and office workers. It’s particularly concerning that more than one-third – 37 percent – of senior households fit the ALICE profile as aging workers are, of course, at higher risk of being sidelined from employment by illness, injury and other setbacks.

Housing was tagged as a Hawaii household’s greatest expense — an average of $1,362 per month for a two-bedroom apartment, according to federal figures.

In this area, the state in partnership with AUW is now providing a stopgap for households teetering on homelessness. Last year, the Coordinated Statewide Homeless Initiative provided short-term grants to people in 1,610 households across the state, many of whom were in the eviction process. The assistance helped fend off homelessness in most cases.

For the sake of establishing an improved sense of stability and self-sufficiency for some 165,000 ALICE households and another 47,000 living below the poverty level, the state, in tandem with charitable organizations, should continue to support such effective initiatives and others.