Recommendations from a Wahiawa community meeting focused on homeless issues Tuesday night could go to Gov. David Ige and his homeless task force, Mayor Kirk Caldwell, City Council members and legislative leaders as early as next week, adding Wahiawa’s ideas to how the entire state should treat the homeless.

State Rep. Marcus Oshiro organized Tuesday’s standing-room-only meeting at the Wahiawa Hongwanji Mission, which included the creation of the Wahiawa Homeless Alliance “to make sure we’re not forgotten or left behind,” Oshiro told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “Everything’s being focused on Honolulu, in Kakaako. But there are communities like Kakaako throughout the islands where communities are being affected.”

Oshiro brought together an all-star cast of 19 homeless experts, social service providers, health care officials, landowners, government officials, Honolulu police and others who work with — or are affected by — the homeless people living around Lake Wilson, under the bridges and out in the open in Wahiawa town.

Scott Morishige, who was on his second day as the state’s new homeless coordinator, told the crowd that “it really makes me hopeful and excited to see such a huge turnout.”

He told those in the audience that everyone needs to come together to deal with homelessness because the issue is “so huge that no one person or organization can tackle it alone.”

City Managing Director Roy Amemiya, who grew up in nearby Whitmore Village, said developing affordable housing is the key issue for reducing homelessness on Oahu.

“That’s the problem we need to solve,” Amemiya said.

For the people of Wahiawa and Whitmore Village, Amemiya said, “it hurts me to see so many people in this community having to deal with the homeless problem.”

But Oshiro (D, Wahi­awa-Whitmore-Poamoho) began the meeting by telling the people in the audience, “more importantly, you’ll learn to get involved.”

Greg Payton, chairman of Partners in Care — a coalition of nonprofit providers dedicated to ending homelessness on Oahu — brought 50 handouts to the meeting but told the packed crowd, “That’s not even enough to go halfway around the room.”

Nestor Muyot, 71, of Whitmore Village came out in the pounding rain because the issue of homelessness has become a major topic for both the Whitmore Village Association and the Wahiawa-Whitmore Village Neighborhood Board, on which he simultaneously serves.

Wahiawa’s homeless population seemed to have dwindled about a year ago, “but now it’s back,” Muyot said. “Our main concern is public safety. We’re all thinking about it.”

A “point-in-time” census conducted Jan. 25 found that 188 people were homeless in the area from Mililani to Kaena Point to Turtle Bay, which encompasses Wahiawa and Whitmore Village.

But Oshiro suspects that the actual number of homeless is much larger.

After more than an hour of presentations and questions about crime, rental prices and other issues, community members then broke into four separate groups — titled “Opportunity,” “Weakness,” “Strength” and “Threat” — to brainstorm ideas.

Oshiro plans to turn the best ideas from Wahiawa into recommendations that he’ll send to state and city leaders.

By having a “better-informed Wahiawa community,” Oshiro hopes “they can make a difference.”

Earlier in the day Ige announced that his Governor’s Leadership Team on Homelessness and Partners in Care had moved 28 people – five families and six adults – out of the Kakaako homeless encampment. They represent about 10 percent of the 293 people surveyed in early August.

In addition, Ige said, four families and 13 adults — a total of 27 people — moved out of the Next Step shelter and the Institute for Human Services shelter and into homes.

In a statement, Morishige said, “This movement of individuals and families from the streets into temporary shelters is significant because their lives have been changed for the better and because it demonstrates the positive outcomes we can achieve when the city and the state work together. Delayed enforcement in the area helped service providers move more people into shelters.”