A ray of hope shines on the job scene

We want so much to believe good news, but we are just holding our breath.

Hawaii’s largest job fair, Job Quest, drew 3,500 people seeking employment to the Neal Blaisdell Center this week, way down from the 5,900 who attended a year ago. But the number of employers was up, from 135 to 150 this year. Not a huge jump, but that’s the kind of trend line you want to see.

And they didn’t seem to be merely taking resumes. Hawaii Pacific Health had actual positions to fill — glad tidings for all the newly jobless former staffers of Hawaii Medical Centers that have shut down.

Not out of the woods yet, but when job-fair organizers who have their ear to the ground are flashing a tentative thumbs-up, that’s encouraging. We’ll take it.

Accepting change is hard to accept

It might be inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any less lamentable — or difficult.

Back in the day when sugar was king, plantations blanketed huge acreages of land throughout Hawaii, giving rise to plantation villages for the field workers. When the plantations closed, most of the houses slowly but surely went the same way.

On Koloa Camp on Kauai, 13 tenants remain — eight in houses and five on ag lots — where 32 plantation houses once thrived. Most of the tenants, elderly who have lived there for decades, have now received eviction notices to vacate by March 8. The landowner has plans to raze the old homes to build a 50-unit development called Waihohonu. Some tenants say they don’t know where they will go.

Perhaps it is a truism that you often can’t stop progress — but again, that doesn’t make this situation any less lamentable, or difficult.