City needs to do more to mitigate homelessness

The recent Hawaii Poll by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and Hawaii News Now revealed that homelessness is the issue most important to Hawaii voters.

State legislators and the governor echoed that sentiment, making homelessness and affordable housing top priorities for the 2016 legislative session.

Over the years, lawmakers at the county, state and federal level have tried an array of strategies. We built shelters, increased funding for social-service programs, enacted new laws and formed task force after working group after leadership team.

While Mayor Kirk Caldwell may assert that he is satisfied with the city’s efforts thus far, here are the hard truths:

>> The homeless population in Honolulu, a statistic that most agree is underreported, has increased every year since 2009.

>> We have more shelter space than people willing to live there.

>> Oahu is short 25,000 housing units to accommodate the needs of our population, and 20,000 of those units need to be affordable to households earning 80 percent of the area median income ($76,650 for a family of four), or less, according to the city Department of Community Services.

>> The city administration proposed an affordable housing requirement for developers. The business community balked at the idea, and plans to codify the proposal have been suspended indefinitely.

>> We don’t know how many people are at risk of becoming homeless should their primary source of income vanish, or how many qualify as hidden homeless by living with family or friends.

>> The City Council appropriated $139 million over the last two fiscal years to combat homelessness and support the development of affordable and workforce housing. Yet we still have more homeless on Oahu than at any time in the past seven years.

It is our responsibility as elected officials to ensure that the money we are appropriating to address these persistent problems is being spent in the most efficient and effective fashion.

We must take a hard look at how the city spends money on shelters and services and fund only those that have a consistent record of success getting families, children and the chronic homeless off the streets.

As we enter the fiscal 2017 budget cycle, I will ask for a formal audit of how the city spends money on homelessness and affordable housing. We need a lot more information about what works and what does not. The City Council members continue to work with their constituents in each district to identify land parcels and buildings that can be developed or acquired for the purpose of building workforce housing.

Gov. David Ige’s emergency proclamation allows us to circumvent procurement laws as long as the projects are intended to combat homelessness. Members intend to put money into the budget for hygiene centers and social service hubs like the Urban Rest Stops in Seattle and the Navigation Center in San Francisco.

Homelessness is not a problem that will go away. Not in a capitalist economy and certainly not on an island in the middle of the Pacific where the largest employers are government and the visitor industry. We can continue to build homeless shelters but we will never be able to force people to move into them.

If we are serious about managing the issue of homelessness, we have to spend our money more efficiently, and we must build housing that people who earn far less than the area median income can afford.

We need the business community to come to the table with resources and a willingness to put people over profit. The cost of continuing to do what we have always done is far too great, and we know for a fact that it does not work.