The city is putting up $3.5 million toward the purchase of a building in urban Honolulu that would serve as housing for homeless people with special needs, such as disabilities or mental illness.
"This population is among the most visible of the homeless population," Mayor Peter Carlisle said Tuesday in announcing the Pathways Project.
The project is offering city funding for a service provider or coalition of providers to buy an existing property to be repaired or renovated for use as transitional housing.
"We will be focusing on urban Honolulu because that is where the population that we intend to serve is currently concentrated," said Keith Ishida, director of the mayor’s Office of Housing.
The exact location is to be determined. Once a lead service provider is selected, leaders and city officials will seek community input to determine where the need is greatest and whether the community will support the project.
"The last thing you want to do is ram this down the throat of a community," Carlisle said. "You want to make sure that they’re going to be involved and they know what they’re getting into."
A proposal to adopt a "housing first" model for homeless people along River Street in Chinatown was met by stiff neighborhood opposition. The housing-first approach provides services, such as drug and alcohol abuse counseling or mental health evaluation, only after an individual’s housing needs are met.
"The community has begun to realize that this particular concentration of homeless remains," Ishida said. "It’s a persistent homeless population of persons who can’t participate in shelter. We’re going to offer these neighborhoods in urban Honolulu a solution."
Ishida said the project would seek a property with 20 to 30 apartment units but that the number of people to be served and the types of units would be determined by community input.
The money will come from the city’s affordable housing fund within the budget of the Office of Community Services. The deadline for providers to apply is May 30, and officials said they expect to select a provider soon after. An opening date would depend on the amount of community involvement, officials said.
The city provides services for about 9,000 people a year through its various programs, Ishida said.
Darryl Vincent, chairman of the nonprofit group Partners in Care, a coalition of service providers, said one of the biggest barriers to providing services for homeless is finding available shelter.
"Most nonprofits, we have funding for supportive services," Vincent said. "We have to be able to match those supportive services to finding the housing.
"It’s our job to go find units, and sometimes that’s the most difficult part."
