The way Victor Geminiani sees it, Hawaii’s high cost of living has produced a kind of pipeline of homelessness. Many household budgets are so thinly insulated with emergency cash that a single emergency — loss of a job, most likely, or a health problem — can drain away the next rent payment, leaving the family on the streets.

For those who take refuge there — or in the park, beach or car — there’s got to be something better than a nylon tent or even a layer of cardboard to shelter them, he said.

"We’re never going to be able to solve our pipeline to the streets," said Geminiani, executive director at the Hawai‘i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice. "Let’s start experimenting with ideas that provide more humane housing for people until their financial situation improves."

Geminiani is an attorney whose public-interest legal agency, formerly known as Lawyers for Equal Justice, has advocated here primarily for people living in, or needing, low-income housing.

The proliferation of impromptu homelessness camps, however, has driven him and staff attorney Jenny Lee to produce a white paper, titled "Addressing Homelessness: New Approaches to Affordable Housing in Hawai‘i."

It’s illuminating a debate over the most acute needs and the best directions for innovation. The report focuses on cheaper ways of providing more durable structures: everything from sturdy hexagonal shelters known as yurts to repurposed shipping containers converted to cabins.

Others believe the best course for progress is finding new ways of delivering social services to homeless individuals and families, to assist those facing chronic barriers and to help the capable back to self-sufficiency.

The conclusion of most people in the know: There’s ample room for new ideas along multiple fronts.

The report is making the rounds of social service providers working in the field, as well as lawmakers such as state Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland, who chairs the Human Services Committee. Among her many roles this session is shepherding bills dealing with various housing challenges (a few of the highlights, as well as private initiatives, are listed on page E4).

Chun Oakland also heads a Housing and Homeless Task Force that brainstorms about solutions for the whole range of sheltering problems.

"We want to put most of our resources into permanent housing and into services to help individuals and homeless families to settle into housing," she said. "But for those who really, truly can’t go to a shelter … they’re on the street. If we can designate an area for them — and I’m not thinking open area, but more churches, nonprofits that have property, even schools that are closed, not being used for anything. I wish we could have a safe place for them to stay."

For example, Mitchell said, she’d like to build on the work of organizations such as Family Promise of Hawaii, a network of churches that cooperate in housing individuals and families, who rotate on a weekly basis from place to place.

Geminiani said he worries about transience of people moving from one site to the next. His agency’s report points to success experienced in other cities with permanent or semi-permanent sheltering communities.

One example in Portland, Ore., is Dignity Village, an encampment run by its residents through the sponsorship of a nonprofit that signed a management contract with the city. The advantages of cheaply constructed but decent dwellings, as well as the pride of self-governance, can help stop the downward spiral of homelessness, he added.

"That would give people some stability in their life," Geminiani said, "and you can build around that sense of community."

The benefits of community don’t accrue simply from familiarity. Connie Mitchell is executive director of the Institute for Human Services, Hawaii’s longest-established shelter and social service agency. Down Iwilei Road from the IHS men’s shelter, the city had recently cleared a fairly long-standing encampment

"Prior to that there was all kinds of drug-dealing going on over there," she said, "and if that’s the kind of community … I don’t support that," she said.

Mitchell said that IHS policy is geared much less toward making encampments comfortable and more toward social-service intervention to provide assists at-risk clients need to avoid or shorten a period of homelessness. In addition, she said, outreach will increasingly include getting mental-health and substance-abuse services to people where they are.

She acknowledged that shelter programs tend to move people out during the day, in some cases because they close. But others, including IHS, make allowances for the working poor to stay during the day to support them in holding down night-shift work, often the jobs most available to them in a bad economy, she said.

"If you come and experience what it’s like to be at the shelters, there is a lot of community building," she said. "There are support groups going on over here. I run a group every Wednesday night, and some of the guys get into helping. They help in the kitchen, they help serve. They engage other people coming in to welcome them to the shelter. We have a guest services orientation here.

"We keep track of people coming and going on a daily basis," Mitchell added. "If people need to be out to be with family, that’s usually an OK thing. … every person’s supported in an individualized way. But we do focus on employment. And that’s why we encourage people to leave to go find work."

Geminiani acknowledged that a few of the dwellings highlighted in the report have been tried (Mitchell pointed to examples at the Ohana Family of the Living God site on the North Shore).

"I think, to be frank, that this report was not an attempt to say we’re not doing anything," he said. This was a report to sort of stir imagination, creativity, and know there are a number of alternatives to the current shelter system we have now that we ought to be exploring. That’s sort of a new concept in the provider community because we’ve been doing the same thing for a very long time and, I think, with pretty poor results.

"So we are hoping we will be able to use this report as a sparkplug to start people thinking: How much is this system costing us? According to (former state homelessness coordinator) Marc Alexander it’s about $40,000 for a year for every person who’s on the streets.

"No. 2, there is a cadre of individuals who will not go to shelters because, for all intents and purposes, shelters don’t provide privacy; I don’t think they provide a sense of community.

"There are vermin, there are bedbugs, there are roaches, there is a cacophony of sounds with mental illness," he added. "I would argue that there’s a sliver — how much, we don’t know — of people that just cannot or will not go to shelters. And therefore, for those people, there has to be a better alternative."

There’s a lot of discussion ahead before additional sites will be identified or any more innovative structures will be tried. But there is movement behind Senate Bill 2568, which last week passed a key joint hearing of Chun Oakland’s panel with the Committee on Public Safety, Government Operations and Military Affairs.

The measure, aimed at solidifying a network of transitional housing sites in the course of clearing beaches and parks of homeless encampments, would make each county "responsible for partnering with nonprofit organizations to provide information on and access to temporary emergency shelters if the county relocates homeless individuals and families from public property."

Some community groups are already stepping up, Chun Oakland said.

"The Sisters of St. Francis have a parcel in Waianae; they have cabins and have invited families to live in the cabins, then start to learn some work ethic, helping to take care of the grounds," she said.

"I wish more property owners would do that kind of service," Chun Oakland added. "It’s still not considered permanent, but it’s a place families can thrive much better, and hopefully they’ll be connected with people who can help them until they find housing."