The news from Oahu’s latest Homeless Point-in-Time Count is disturbing, no matter how the numbers are crunched, or which lens is used for viewing them. As complex as the homeless population is, the takeaway message here is simple: Oahu is going in the wrong direction, with more people living unsheltered, children growing up right on the street.

Even more distressingly, the tents and shantytowns springing up everywhere haven’t inspired a sense of urgency equal to the crushing need.

Clearly, this crowded, expensive island is lacking in units that provide conventional, permanent, truly affordable rentals. Directing the homeless to permanent housing has produced optimal results elsewhere, but most of those cities don’t have the housing deficit that Honolulu does.

Transitional steps — inventive adaptations of existing or quick-build structures to use as dwellings — must be taken, right now. Those 4 acres on Sand Island are still sitting idle, and it’s likely there are unused city and state facilities that could be repurposed quickly to get the homeless out of their roadside tents.

The overall homeless count, taken over five days in January, was 4,903, up 4 percent from last year and up 34.7 percent since the recession hit in 2009.

According to the draft report, there’s been some improvement in survey methodology, so it’s uncertain how much is due to increased accuracy.

But there’s no way to read the 19 percent increase in the unsheltered homeless since 2014 as anything else than a government failure to meet the challenge.

The policies in place have pressed for "Housing First" in the case of the chronically homeless — generally those who need intense social and medical services along with stable housing. For the rest of the population, the term is "rapid rehousing." That refers to the attempt to stave off prolonged periods of homelessness that tend to make existing problems even worse.

But there’s nothing rapid about the rehousing that’s happening, because the inventory of affordable rentals is so low, experts said. Others underscore the shortage of treatment capacity for the mental illness that afflicts a sector of the homeless population.

Some people wait it out on the streets rather than go to the shelters. The social service workers argue persuasively that pushing them into shelters is unrealistic, but the only alternative government has at the ready for most of them is to let them live in the streets.

That’s unacceptable. Homelessness had already reached crisis proportions in 2010. Five years later, Hawaii still seems to be grasping at straws. Real leadership and meaningful action for more units, from the governor down to state and city politicians, are direly needed.

The measures proposed in the state Legislature are unconscionably overdue. And even now, it’s not a slam-dunk that they’ll all get through conference committees.

Here are a few of the remaining proposals presented Friday by the Legislature’s Task Force on Housing and Homelessness:

» House Bill 1354 would authorize bonds to finance projects to increase public- and affordable-housing stock.

» Senate Bill 1101 would extend the availability of an exemption from the state civil service law, making it easier to hire people for repair and maintenance of public housing units.

» SB 971 ensures that anyone seeking a general excise tax exemption for delivering new or rehabilitated housing units meets enhanced affordability rules for the units. The units must stay in the affordable inventory for various periods — five years for moderate rehabilitation work, 10 years for substantial work and 30 years for new construction.

» SB 1299 would allot up to $38 million in conveyance tax revenues to the Rental Housing Trust Fund. This is getting pushback from agencies that would get less in the deal. The reality, however, is that the homelessness and affordable housing problem demands a higher priority be given to keeping this fund flush.

What’s most ironic is that, more than a half-dozen years ago, Republican Gov. Linda Lingle started the ball rolling for homelessness relief, issuing an emergency proclamation to accelerate creation of shelters and transitional homes in Honolulu, Waianae and other Leeward Oahu sites.

Those initiatives were not perfect, but they were certainly quick, by comparison.

It’s shameful that Hawaii’s current government, in which there is no partisan divide, hasn’t served the community with faster, better coordinated solutions.