State lawmakers considering grass huts to help homeless
JAMM AQUINO / MARCH 2014
In this file photo, Sen. Suzanne Chun-Oakland looks at art pieces by her children at the State Capitol.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
This historic Robert Louis Stevenson grass hut was restored on the Salvation Army’s Waioli grounds in Manoa.
Hawaii lawmakers are considering a unique solution to the housing crisis: They want to make it possible for people to live in traditional Hawaiian grass huts.
Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland is introducing a bill in the state Legislature’s upcoming session that would let officials set aside land to build Native Hawaiian thatched homes. She discussed that and other bills designed to alleviate homelessness at a meeting of the Housing and Homeless Task Force today.
“There is an interest in recapturing some of the traditional ways of living among our people here in Hawaii,” Chun Oakland said.
Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, a cultural practitioner, approached the senator with the idea. Officials creating housing solutions should take into account the culture of the people they’re trying to help, including the fact that Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders have large extended families, Wong-Kalu said.
“We have a different culture other than what housing will allow,” Wong-Kalu said. “When you look at shelters for the houseless, it’s all based on the nuclear family, and that’s not our culture.”
Not everyone at the meeting was immediately on board with the proposal.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” said Shannon Wood, co-founder of the Windward Ahupuaa Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for smart growth solutions. “This is 2016, not 1616.”
Wood asked whether there would be toilets in the huts, and Chun Oakland said the details haven’t been fully worked out.
Proponents say they don’t know of any people in Hawaii currently living in the traditional structures, called “hale,” but it is technically legal. They say traditional hale are cheaper and more environmentally friendly than other types of housing.
The Legislature approved a law in 2007 pushing the idea of traditional Hawaiian architecture as part of a package of solutions to the state’s housing and homelessness crisis. That bill required each of the state’s counties to come up with their own permitting process within a year. But only Maui County came up with a building code, and it’s for nonresidential structures.
Critics say living in traditional grass huts could pose safety hazards.
Chun Oakland and state Rep. Mark Hashem are planning to introduce additional bills or resolutions in the Senate and House to address homelessness. Among the proposals:
— Rental subsidy payments for programs like Section 8 would be exempted from paying the state general excise tax.
— To help identify potential land for housing development, all state agencies would submit a list of land holdings and the agencies’ plans for the parcels to the Legislature.
— A group would assess the housing needs of farm workers throughout the state.
42 responses to “State lawmakers considering grass huts to help homeless”
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Fire Hazard?….equipped with sprinklers and not it is no longer affordable.
Yes, my thoughts exactly. Also, if they really wanted to live “traditionally” I would think they would be trying to do that by now anyway.
BBQ crispy, homeless people?
I want to go back to my little grass shack
In Kealakekua, Hawaiʻi
I want to be with all the kanes and wahines
That I used to know long ago
I can hear the old guitars playing
On the beach at Hōnaunau
I can hear the old Hawaiians saying
Komo mai no kāua i ka hale welakahao
It won’t be long till my ship will be sailing
Back to Kona
A grand old place
That’s always fair to see, you’re telling me
I’m just a little Hawaiian
A homesick island boy
I want to go back to my fish and poi
I want to go back to my little grass shack
In Kealakekua, Hawai`i
Where the humuhumunukunukuâpua`a
Go swimming by
Go swimming by? Homeless, go smoking by.
Maybe no smoking allowed. Did they burn down a lot when the Hawaiians lived in them, long ago?
There are obvious safety issues but I am all for using any and all forms of housing that can bring stability to the lives of the homeless. Unfortunately, most Hawaiians do not want to live in such an arrangements. I am always amazed that the media believes huge number of Hawaiians want to return to a mythical past. Most want to move on and are doing so in spite of ignorance in the media.
Why not? After all it’s Hawaii….
I hope this doesn’t make the national news
Only if POTUS mentions it as a “solution” in his State of Union speech.
Al Jazeera published a major news report on it.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2016/1/12/hawaii-mulls-grass-huts-for-homeless.html
The suggestion to build grass huts doesn’t make any sense at all, in fact it sounds kinda crazy.
A tent city with various government social services available to residents makes more sense. The state just needs to designate the place and provide security/personal hygiene facilities. That’s the only way you’ll get people off the sidewalks.
Homeless will take apart the thatch grass roof, and smoke it.
Not if it’s made of hemp
Pretty insulting.
That’s his forte.
Can’t call me insulting to the homeless until you take some home to live in your house.
Have you taken homeless people in to live in your house?
Crazy Mike as usual. LOL
Trailer parks are, and always have been the answer.
Good thing we don’t have tornadoes here…
I hope I get to room with Mary Ann. If not, Ginger would be okay.
Homeless get first dips with the homeless.
Maybe they can make their own malo and pa`u, too. And raise their own taro, pound their own poi, catch their own fish… then pay their benefactor legislators and governor with a portion of their production. Yes, let’s go all the way back in time just to satisfy the fantasies of our elected officials.
What a tourist attraction! The loin cloth for men, women bare-breasted in hip hugging sarongs (bottom only), grinning with gap-toothed smiles. And if a tourist wanders to close, they will club them to death, and deflesh his body to offer to the gods, a la Capt. James Cook.
If they need a model to follow, there’s the Robert Louis Stevenson grass shack in Manoa. It’s got a galvanized pipe frame.
A tool shed from Home Depot is a better solution. Check out these shelters/houses that was built in 10 days or less. Hello, politicians…TEN days or less. and not one of them is a grass shack.
http://www.dwell.com/houses-we-love/article/all-these-prefabs-were-assembled-10-days-or-less?utm_campaign=articles_feed&utm_medium=syndication_network&utm_source=outbrain#1
“They don’t know of any people in Hawaii currently living in the traditional structures, called hale, but it is technically legal.”
Someone’s pulling our legs, right? With the zoning codes and housing codes here, grass huts are legal? That’s not even very funny.
Look, even in Puna — the farthest off-grid we can get in Hawaii — we’re always hearing about “non-permitted structures” and worrying about zoning inspector visits. I’d love to build huts of bamboo, or pili grass, on my land up there. But the only way that’s gonna happen is to build a “tiny house” on a truck bed first (those are currently unregulated, technically considered “mobile homes”) and then build the indigenous structures and call them “cultural lifestyle examples”.
There is no way grass huts are gonna be allowed for occupancy on O’ahu.
Mayor, Caldwell’s ordnance exemption for the homeless puts them above the law.
Ordinance, not ordnance. Just like my typo, too, not to. Big diff in meaning.
Specify the land area and let them put up their tents there. Why waste more money building grass hut?
The Hawaiians that hate telescopes probably think plumbing is a desecration too.
Come to Washington so you can smoke weed legally. Sounds like you guys have smoked too much already.
Senator Chun-Oakland is going a bit la-la land in her senior senatoritis. She’s always been a bit off the wall, I mean, off the pili grass.
How long will it take to make the homeless to make the transition to the modern world? This idea for grass huts will forever keep the natives backward and they will never join the modern world. The homeless children then will accept the idea that it is their lot forever to live in grass huts. Come-on give them a better break, let’s get them out of the morass of living in the past. Do not perpetuate living in the past. To succeed in the modern world, adaption is necessary! The human brain is forever evolving with new ideas. Do not keep on instilling ideas that cannot exist in the modern world.
“Addendum” quit keeping them subjugated like in the colonial days! This is the 21st Century a quit figuring out pie-in-the-eye solutions. Get down to root causes of homelessness and address them! Poverty, drug addiction, family structural breakdown and stressing cultural morality.
Typical politician trying to get in the news. Like mentioned this is 2916 and not 1616. Please Chun just do what you were elected for and look for things to get in the news. Like Takai on wearing aloha shirt in congress. People like you two are really simple- minded people
Typical politician trying to get in the news. Like mentioned this is 2016 and not 1616. Please Chun just do what you were elected for and look for things to get in the news. Like Takai on wearing aloha shirt in congress. People like you two are really simple- minded people
Next thing you know the legislature will want time off for “nap time” and have “snacks” provided.
One fire, one storm and city and state to the rescue.
…and when we go to the mainland and are asked if we live in grass shacks, we can say “yes”. Duh!
Move all the homeless to Kahoolawe. Lot of land to build their grass shacks.
The legislature even considering this move tells us how serious our legislature is about the homeless.
What a JOKE. That wahine legislature does not belong there; making such a suggestion is just poking fun at homeless peoples plight, and it includes children and special needs individuals as well.
Shameful.