Ramp up efforts on homelessness

Numbers don’t lie, perhaps, but they do tell an incomplete story.

The new numbers on homelessness are less than stellar. Homelessness has risen here — discouraging news, viewed in the national context. Hawaii is one of only 14 states and territories, plus the District of Columbia, that saw an increase.

But the takeaway should not be that state and county efforts are ineffective and should be abandoned. It’s that they have lagged behind the pace necessary to reduce homelessness in a state where conditions make that challenge so difficult.

A federally mandated “point-in-time” survey released last week draws a mixed conclusion. The bad news: The homeless count has risen by 4 percent, statewide.

The good news is that the rise is down from 9 percent and 10 percent increases charted in the 2014 and 2015 tallies, respectively.

On Oahu, especially, the increase was less than 1 percent, signalling that neighbor island counties need more aggressive campaigns. Gov. David Ige has said he plans to ramp up efforts statewide, which is the correct response.

The point-in-time count, taken each January, put the number at 7,921, making Hawaii’s rate the highest among all 50 states. Even in a state with as mild a climate as ours, life on the streets is harsh, hazardous to health and erosive to well-being overall.

The latest unemployment figures show joblessness at historic low levels, so the problem is underemployment in a state with exorbitant costs. People working at minimum wage can barely afford housing without piggybacking multiple jobs and several wage-earners in a single family.

And when there is disruption in earnings from any of them, the household falls short of what it needs for basics of living.

Substance abuse and mental illness plague many among the homeless. Countering these ills is a complex process, but it’s been aided through the implementation of “housing first” programs. People stand a better chance of addressing their health problems, becoming more self-reliant and remaining housed longer if they are given stable housing to begin with.

Those strategies should continue, with counties and state agencies contributing resources.

One reason why other states have progressed much more quickly toward a solution is Hawaii’s sky-high property costs. Investing in more low-cost residential units for the homeless is a simpler matter in states where land doesn’t cost so much.

And overall, island housing inventory is low, with the laws of supply and demand driving up rents beyond what many low-income people can afford.

It helps when affordable inventory expands at all levels, because added housing frees other units for those further down the income scale. There has been some movement on Oahu, thanks a bit to transit-oriented development opportunities along the rail line.

On Oahu, developers such as Stanford Carr have focused efforts on filling the need for workforce housing, It’s encouraging to see gains made on the neighbor islands as well. A proposed apartment complex in West Maui that, along with a single-family subdivision, will yield 882 homes, about half of them at affordable levels.

Financing these projects is not easy, with myriad federal, state and county hurdles to surmount. Lowering these barriers by improving tax incentives and simplifying review processes for developers could bring more players into the affordability game.

Finally, decisionmakers must remain clear-headed about the challenge they face. Steering more of Hawaii’s homeless back to more secure lives does require intervention — even something that could be described as “tough love.”

Honolulu came under fire last week from the National Law Center on Homelessness &Poverty, which issued a report titled “Housing Not Handcuffs.”

This city was among those identified in the report under the banner “Hall of Shame,” singled out primarily for its “sit-lie” ordinance banning sidewalk encampments. The “sweeps” conducted to clear sidewalks were criticized for their disruption and destruction of personal property.

Officials and crews do need to be scrupulous about warning homeless campers to move and take due care with personal property. But the hard fact is that clusters of tents that are simply allowed to persist on sidewalks grow into disease- and crime-ridden eyesores, as everyone who saw the Kakaako Makai encampment can attest.

That is unfair to the rest of the community, which shouldn’t have to live in its midst. And it does no favors for the homeless, either. Most of them will have better lives if guided to housing, even if it takes a nudge to get them on that path.