Scott Morishige

What helps Scott Morishige remain focused on the goals of his agency is witnessing those success stories, the people who’ve come back from years of living on the streets and are on a better path.

And at 35, the executive director of the nonprofit social service advocacy agency PHOCUSED has also lived through a family tragedy that helps him understand how life can take difficult turns.

While studying political science at Oregon State University, his father died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Rather than pursue a law degree on the mainland, Morishige moved home to be close to his mother and younger brother.

Additionally, a stint working with Legal Aid showed him there was satisfaction in helping people with very basic problems, and his graduate studies and career path then turned toward social work.

"I think that was one of the things that also motivated me to get into social services, to be able to help people," Morishige said, "knowing the impact that a family goes through when you run into unexpected emergency hardship like that."

PHOCUSED (Protecting Hawaii’s Ohana Children, Under-Served Elderly and Disabled) most recently has turned most of its attention to the homelessness and housing crises, on Oahu in particular. But the mission for the half-dozen staff and interns extends into the whole range of services to the vulnerable.

Among its interests at the state Capitol are bills to waive the fee for state IDs; boost the low-income household renters credit from $50 to $150 annually; and a bill to cap the interest rate on payday loans, a pressure valve often tapped by the poor.

Such small boosts can clear real barriers to finding a way off the streets. And even if frustration with the slow progress is also real, Morishige is buoyed by encounters with people who do find that way, and he wants more people to hear their stories.

"They’re people, just like you and me," he said. "I think but for life circumstances, people could find themselves in that same situation, because times are tight for many of us."

QUESTION: How would you define the PHOCUSED mission?

ANSWER: I think the purpose of

PHOCUSED is really to represent a voice for the vulnerable populations in our state who receive health and human services but who often aren’t empowered to speak out for themselves.

Our members really try to provide that advocacy for populations like the homeless, survivors of domestic violence, and so on, really try to represent them. …

I think in the area of homelessness, our work in providing this voice and doing this advocacy, it’s not just testifying at the Legislature or the City Council, it’s really going out in the community, bringing service providers and other stakeholders in the community together, trying to figure out how can we really address this issue so we can better benefit the people we’re trying to provide the voice for. …

For affordable housing and homelessness, it doesn’t impact only the organizations that you think of traditionally as homeless service providers, such as IHS. But it also impacts even an organization like Child and Family Service; they provide a wide range of services to elderly, domestic violence victims …

But all those populations struggle with housing, because Hawaii has the highest cost of housing in the nation. We have the second-highest rate of homelessness, and it impacts all of these different populations. …

Q: Do you think the homelessness crisis has overtaken all other social issues? Maybe because it’s so visible?

A: I think homelessness is more visible now than it’s been in the past. Housing, just in general, I think is a very critical issue facing our city. …

Some people are paying 70 to 80 percent of their income just toward rent. And trying to figure out what you can do to help those people, so they don’t tip over and fall into homelessness … You’d be surprised how many people are just kind of on that tipping point, where all it takes is one small, unexpected emergency to tip them over the edge where they’re at risk of losing their home.

Q: Where they get one more bill than they had before?

A: Yeah. And these are typically people who are working, you know? … We had some teachers who were clients, some people were state employees. It really is the whole spectrum that has impacts.

Q: Isn’t the common assumption that substance abuse is a major factor that affects the homeless?

A: Homelessness is very complex. There are many different factors that cause homelessness. …

I think one of the things that has been very critical in PHOCUSED work is working with homeless service providers to launch this common assessment tool, the vulnerability index. … That’s been very helpful because then you can really see that of the households we’ve surveyed — and we surveyed over 2,500 since March of last year — that there really is a continuum of need.

There’s about a third of those households that really need not only long-term housing subsidy but intensive wraparound services to maintain housing, because oftentimes they have very serious mental health issues, maybe struggling with substance use, and so on.

But you also have another segment of the population, 26 percent, that they don’t need any kind of case management- or social services; they just simply need affordable housing, they need their rent to be more affordable. …

When we advocate at the Capitol, we’re trying now to use the data that we get from those assessments to really make the case. Just this morning, there was a hearing on Senate Bill 120 that would provide an appropriation for a range of different housing programs.

So we were able to say in our testimony that one of the reasons why it makes sense to appropriate more for the rental housing trust fund for affordable housing is because of the homeless people we surveyed, over a quarter, they don’t need ongoing case-management services, they just simply need housing to be more affordable. …

Q: Does PHOCUSED take a position on the types of units needed, such as microunits?

A: I think we need to look at a variety of approaches and be open-minded, and kind of look to what’s working in other communities across the country. Microunits are a model that’s very successful in high-density cities. So I think especially in the urban core, it makes sense to look into microunits.

Q: Are these like those single-resident occupancy units?

A: Yes, but I think microunits come with their own kitchen and bathroom.

For certain segments of the population, for seniors, for individuals who might be on disability and fixed income, a small microunit probably would work and be a good solution.

I think another thing we’re looking at are accessory dwelling units. They are kind of like ohana zoning, but not restricted just to family members, where if you have an extra den in your home you could convert that to housing. It would be an easy way to increase the inventory we have in our community.

I think you have to look at many different strategies like that because, again, there’s a wide spectrum of people needing housing. But I think microunits would be a way to make better, more efficient use of any new developments that come up.

Q: Were you involved in the street survey yourself?

A: Mostly we’re a step removed. But we have gone out, particularly in the Kakaako area. We’ve helped to coordinate different outreach providers to do assessments.

So I did go out and talk to some of the families there.

We also have individuals calling our office to try and see how they can get access to housing resources. So sometimes we’ll receive calls directly.

Q: Did your personal encounters change your perspective?

A: I think it makes it more real, right? To see people face to face and hear their story. And I think the reality is a lot of those families have been through our shelter system. A lot of them are also working. Many of the families I talked to in Kakaako were employed. They just simply weren’t making enough.

Q: To pay rent anywhere?

A: Yeah. Or, I think if they could afford rent, they’d be on a very tight budget, where basically almost all of their income would just go to rent, leaving nothing else.

And I think that population in Kakaako, the main reason why many of them are homeless is economic. … It really drove home for me why supporting efforts to increase our housing inventory, or increase the resources we have to develop affordable housing, especially rental housing, is so critical. Because not everybody needs intensive social services or case management to be able to get off the streets….

Q: For them it’s the high rents and low pay?

A: Yeah. Another big priority for us has been … trying to address economic inequality in our state, and really looking at making tweaks to some of our existing tax credits. How can you adjust some existing tax credits to put more money back in the pockets of low-income households?

Q: For example?

A: We have a real chance of getting through the legislative session is something called the low-income household renters credit, which is an existing credit that hasn’t been adjusted since the early 1980s. … That would really benefit a lot of those families I was talking about earlier, who really are at that tipping point where their income’s stretched so thin….

I think we’re trying to look at these issues holistically. What can we do at the policy level? …

Q: What do you think of the unconventional housing units being proposed? The shipping containers, and the like?

A: We’ve been looking at the concept of the container units or alternative dwellings, but not so much as transitional housing but how can you use it to provide more permanent inventory. I think the emphasis really has to be on permanent housing, not just transitional shelter.