Hawaii’s homelessness rate goes up 4%

Honolulu’s homeless population grew by less than 1 percent from January 2015 to January 2016, but an increase of homeless people living on the neighbor islands boosted Hawaii’s overall rate to a 4 percent increase, according to federal data released Thursday.

State homeless coordinator Scott Morishige said the difference for Oahu compared with the rest of the state represents greater cooperation among Honolulu, state, federal and social service agencies — and even Honolulu business leaders and private entities.

Now Gov. David Ige’s administration is pushing for the same kind of efforts on the neighbor islands, Mori­shige said.

“We’re not only focusing on Oahu,” Morishige said. “We realize it’s a statewide issue.”

But what works on Oahu might not translate to rural parts of the neighbor islands, he said. “We do need to utilize different strategies,” particularly in remote, rural areas, Morishige said. “How can we work better with the outreach providers and shelter providers?”

He called cooperation among government, business and social service agencies “critical” to reducing island homelessness, which in 2015 represented the highest per capita rate in the country.

In a statement to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Mayor Kirk Caldwell said that Thursday’s report “again shows that the increase in this year’s point-in-time count for Oahu was less than 1 percent, or 37 people. Programs like Housing First have slowed the growth of homelessness and we managed to significantly reduce the number of veterans living on our streets. The city will continue its aggressive and collaborative push for innovative housing solutions until we see sustained reductions in homelessness across Oahu. We are looking forward to the upcoming point-in-time count in January to gauge the impact of the Hale Mauliola Housing Navigation Center at Sand Island, Housing First, and other initiatives such as modular housing and micro-units.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness on Thursday released homeless data from around the country and U.S. territories but did not include a per capita ranking.

HUD spokeswoman Heather Fluit said calculating per capita rates of homelessness — especially for a small state such as Hawaii — represents “a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison.”

In the data released Thursday, Hawaii was one of only 14 states and territories — and Washington, D.C. — that saw their homeless numbers grow.

Collectively, homelessness across the country fell for the seventh consecutive year, said HUD Secretary Julian Castro and Matthew Doherty, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

But while Guam saw a whopping 15.2 percent decrease and states such as North Dakota fell 29.3 percent, the 7,921 homeless people counted in January across the islands represented another year when the number of people living without a permanent home increased.

From 2010 when President Barack Obama launched the first federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness through 2015, Hawaii’s homeless population jumped 35.8 percent, according to data released Thursday.

While Hawaii’s homeless population jumped 4 percent between January 2015 and January 2016, Washington, D.C., led the nation with a 14.4 percent increase in its homeless population, followed by Indiana (14.3 percent), Oklahoma (8.7 percent), Wyoming (7.4 percent) and Washington (7.4 percent).

Castro and Doherty told reporters on a conference call that they hoped President-elect Donald Trump’s administration builds on the efforts of the Obama administration to address homelessness across the country and U.S. territories.

“This new administration ought to understand its responsibility in continuing to lead” on the issue of homelessness, Castro said.

Morishige later added, “I share their hope that we can continue the positive momentum in gains we’ve seen, especially in addressing veterans’ homelessness.”

The 12 percent decline in veterans’ homelessness on Oahu “is significant and reflective of the strategies we’ve used and the resources we’ve used to address the population,” Morishige said.

He said the data released Thursday were based on a so-called “point-in-time” count of Hawaii’s homeless who were counted in January.

“A lot has happened since then, a lot of positive things,” Morishige said.

In mid-October Ige stopped extending his emergency homeless proclamation that he originally issued in 2015.

“The emergency proclamation was needed to be able to respond to the urgent state of homelessness a year ago,” Morishige said. “In that time we’ve implemented a lot of new programs and tried a lot of different things and were able to respond to the crisis. Now it’s time to pivot to a longer-term approach.”