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If a serious hurricane, earthquake or tsunami were to strike Hawaii, the resulting disaster would be cause for a state of emergency. The city and state and federal government would be called into action and plans put into place to help those in need.
We have a similar humanitarian emergency that threatens our tourism industry, our public safety, public health and our very quality of life, not to mention one that stretches the boundaries of human decency, but our public officials have not moved fast enough to take steps to solve it.
Why can’t our elected officials treat the homeless crisis as the emergency it is? The homeless seem to be on every part of Oahu and the neighbor islands. They live along Lake Wilson. They are embedded into Diamond Head. They float along Keehi Lagoon and live deep beneath the Nimitz Viaduct. They have called the Honolulu International Airport, the state Capitol and Waikiki Beach their home. From the Waianae Boat Harbor to the Hawaii Kai park and ride, human beings are living in squalor.
We should be ashamed but we’re not.
The problem is most glaring in Kakaako, where nearly 300 people live in tents, including 31 families. Chief Louis Kealoha implored officials to dismantle the Kakaako tent village in sections because crime was rising. He realizes better than anyone that a large encampment, left to fester, could result in more serious violence than the bumps and bruises suffered by state Rep. Tom Brower. Already crime is surging in the area.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell took the chief seriously and pushed for signs to go up letting those in Kakaako know that block by block, the area would be cleaned up and the eyesore would be cleared. But that progress came to a screeching halt when Gov. David Ige announced on Monday that no clearing would take place because no shelter space was available for families.
The best idea the task force could muster seemed to be an unused maintenance shed in the Kakaako encampment that could maybe house 40 people after it is refurbished. That logic seems to suggest that we need permanent housing for the homeless. We don’t. We need temporary housing and we need it quickly without all the bureaucratic handwringing that is taking place.
More than half of those in Kakaako are single individuals. They can go immediately into shelters. Families need a vacant piece of state property with clean water and security and room for their tents. Or instead of their tents, a large temporary tented area with toilets, clean water and shower facilities. There they can be fed and care for themselves, and those who can’t will be provided the social services and health care they need.
Homeless children, the most vulnerable of all, should never be allowed to wander the squalid encampment without access to proper nutrition, sanitation or education. One national homeless expert said he has never seen anything like it in any city he’s visited.
Simply shameful.
Even those with the greatest compassion for the homeless cannot seriously believe that the Kakaako situation is humane or safe. Yet it has been allowed to continue for the past four years as leaders past and present pass the buck while this Third-World slum continues to grow in the heart of the most beautiful place on Earth.
But with one step forward, there are two steps backward. We finally have the city and state cooperating but they cannot even come up with a simple timetable with measurable goals for progress. And if anyone believes that the number of unsheltered on Oahu are fewer than 2,000, they are sadly mistaken.
Our Hawaii Poll showed that 73 percent of Oahu residents believe the island’s homeless problem has gotten worse over the past year. Politicians usually listen to polls, but perhaps they’re not getting the message.
We cannot control an earthquake, tsunami or hurricane. But we should be able to summon the courage to react in the same way to a man-made emergency.
Dennis Francis is president and publisher of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and Rick Blangiardi is general manager of Hawaii News Now.
