Homeless problem ‘not worsening’

In the past three years, the total number of homeless residents in Hawaii seeking help from publicly funded services has dropped slightly, indicating modest gains in the effort to curb homelessness across the state, a report released today shows.

The homeless families and individuals receiving that help are also logging shorter stays in shelters, and more of them are eventually finding permanent housing, according to the joint study by the University of Hawaii at Manoa and state Department of Human Services called the "Homeless Service Utilization Report: Hawaii 2013."

The study has been conducted every year since 2006. The report provides more insights into Hawaii’s homelessness problem — one of the worst in the nation, officials say — on top of the annual "point-in-time" counts taken to update the homeless population.

The study shows "our homeless situation is not worsening," said Sarah Yuan, an associate specialist with UH-Manoa’s Center on the Family and the report’s lead author.

But even with some gains against homelessness in the past several years, leaders and policymakers still must aggressively work to provide more affordable low-income housing units and help hundreds of island families climb above the poverty line to make a significant dent in the problem, Yuan added.

"We still have people, constantly, continuously falling into this homeless situation," she said Monday. "There is a misconception that a lot of people … they just stay homeless and they refuse help, and they’re utilizing the state’s resources."

In fiscal year 2013 there were 13,639 people who either stayed in a shelter or received some assistance from a homeless outreach program — a 2.4 percent decrease from the number of people who received help in 2012.

Despite the overall decrease, Hawaii nonetheless saw a 2.2 percent increase in 2013 in people staying at publicly funded shelters, according to the report.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, Yuan said. It means slightly more homeless people are moving off the streets and into emergency and transitional shelter programs where they have a better shot at eventually finding permanent homes.

The study found that the average stay for individuals staying in a transitional shelter (which typically allows up to a two-year stay, Yuan said) was reduced in fiscal year 2013 by 21 days, to 224 days.

The report also found that 472 of 1,536 families managed to find permanent housing in 2013 — or 31 percent — compared with 394 of 1,747 families (23 percent) in 2012.

The analysis found some 42 percent of those served in 2013 were "new" homeless, or those who hadn’t appeared in prior years of the report, while 16 percent were "chronic" homeless, meaning they are at least four-time repeat clients in the last three years or they have relied on services for more than a year, Yuan said.

The state’s shelters can handle the demand, Yuan said, "but we need to see more progress" on providing low-income affordable housing, she said.

There are between 8,000 and 10,000 people on the waiting list for state public housing, with an estimated 10-year wait, Jun Yang, executive director of the city Office of Housing, said earlier this year. The city’s waiting list for federally subsidized housing is so full that it is closed to new applicants, he said.

The report’s release coincides with the Statewide Homeless Awareness Conference, an annual gathering of advocates and others looking to tackle homelessness in Hawaii, which will take place at Pacific Beach Hotel today. Preregistration is required, Yuan said.