Ige has failed to lead state out of homelessness pickle

It’s frustrating that eight months after Gov. David Ige formed his high-profile task force to solve chronic homelessness in Hawaii, the only sound we hear is spinning wheels.

Ige hoped to get the power players — House and Senate money chairwomen Sylvia Luke and Jill Tokuda, Mayor Kirk Caldwell, City Council Chairman Ernie Martin and representatives of U.S. Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono — working in common purpose.

Unfortunately, it’s more like everybody pulling in opposite directions.

Ige declared an extended state of emergency, but few major emergency actions have backed it up.

The breakup of a problematic homeless encampment in Kakaako was a short-lived victory, with many homeless moving their tents to other nearby public property.

A temporary shelter for homeless families discussed since August has been slow to materialize, and public housing units remain vacant because of maintenance backlogs.

The governor’s promised legislative initiative to make a big dent in homelessness has sputtered so far.

His request for $75 million in bonds to develop affordable rentals was cut to $25 million by the House, and a $25 million request to develop affordable homes for purchase was cut in half.

Modest requests of $2 million for homeless outreach, $3 million for Housing First and $2 million for rental subsidies were axed altogether by the House; a Senate measure setting a goal of 22,500 new affordable rental units in 10 years has no funding behind it.

Honolulu Hale is even more dysfunctional, with the bitter political rivalry between Caldwell and Martin making homelessness deliberations more a matter of fixing the blame than fixing the problem.

Caldwell too often communicates his homelessness plans to the Council by press conference, and the Council replies by shooting down the mayor’s budget requests to fund a proper city housing program.

The Council held up a badly needed low-income senior housing project in Chinatown because it didn’t like the feng shui, and now is threatening to stop funding for what is arguably the city’s one housing success: Caldwell’s 90-person Hale Mauliola temporary shelter at Sand Island.

The Council’s latest big idea is to establish tent cities in every Council district that wants one — an approach that national experts say only locks in chronic homelessness while providing little real help.

Not that we’re getting much federal help; though Hawaii has the worst homeless rate in the country, we get less than half the average per capita assistance of other states under the federal McKinney-Vento program, according to the National Homeless Information Project.

When Ige formed his task force, he was right that we sorely needed a leader who could cut through the politics, get everybody acting like adults and move a sensible program forward.

If only he had it in him to be that leader.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.