What started as a state-owned storage shed in Kakaako where things went in and stayed for a long time is now a place with a quick churn. The structure behind the University of Hawaii Cancer Center was renovated and last September reopened as the Family Assessment Center.

Its program director, Adrian Contreras, keeps an eye on the 90-day turnaround window for families, who should move into permanent housing by then. On average, the center reports it has met that target in its first six months of operation.

“I think their whole journey here is a prep toward leaving,” said Contreras, 37. “Everything here is a strategy to kind of reinforce that this is an interim state — don’t get comfortable.”

A graduate of Kamehameha Schools and the University of New Mexico, Contreras is finishing his master’s degree in social work at UH-Manoa. He studied criminology as an undergraduate, but even then it was the reason lives went awry — the sociological question — that drew his interest.

After graduation, Contreras soon shifted toward a social-services track. He worked as an education counselor for at-risk youth at Merimed Foundation and put in years with Helping Hands Hawaii, Mental Health Kokua and Catholic Charities Hawaii, which operates the Kakaako assessment center.

He said 18 families have been housed; soon the first clients will get their six-month, how-are-you-doing evaluations. With about 16 months remaining in the center’s first contract, Contreras is hopeful that its approach, teaching families to get help and gain skills, will prove effective.

The secret to surviving the relentless challenge of helping the homeless? Take a deep breath, he said.

“Our program just takes one family at a time. They’re in that moment. Move them out; and then turn our attention to the next family,” Contreras added. “I think that’s the only way we can digest this. We would get overwhelmed if we expanded our view too big.”

Question: What is the range of clientele the center has housed?

Answer: Since opening in late September, families have ranged in size from two (single parent and child) to nine (two parents and seven children). So far, we’ve moved 16 families (28 adults, 32 kids) into long-term housing.

We consider all of our family placements as success stories, but the one that comes to mind is a family of three that came to our facility in December. A 22-year-old woman had custody of her two younger sisters, ages 12 and 14.

The three siblings had already been homeless in Hawaii for about 10 years while under the custody of their parents. Now the oldest sister was taking responsibility to watch over her younger sisters.

Working with the other agencies, we managed to place the three sisters into long-term housing as one family. We’re talking here about 10-plus years of generational homelessness and it felt good to hopefully break that cycle.

Q: What are your annual budget and funding sources?

A: The $1.24 million in state funds for the center comes from an emergency proclamation signed by Gov. David Ige to help deal with the homelessness problem in Kakaako. The state funding is spread out over a 22-month period between Sept. 1, 2016, and June 30, 2018.

We also received a generous $100,000 donation from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation to help operate the facility.

Q: You are reportedly averaging within your 90-day goal for placing families in permanent housing. How long has it taken on the high side? And what are the barriers to placement that families have to overcome?

A: Yes, we are locating housing for families within the 90-day period. During the first quarter of operation, we were transitioning families to housing in 72 days. There were a few exceptions where some families were housed at the center for six months, and we had to seek approval for an extension for them to stay. In those instances, some of the challenges we faced included family size, legal encumbrances, missing identification, and seeking supportive documents to assure that services are in place to help the family transition successfully following placement.

Catholic Charities Hawai‘i has a strong history of giving people a hand-up, not a hand-out. We’re so pleased to partner with the state, building on our strong housing program and our relationships with other social service agencies, to provide homeless families with young children a temporary safe haven until we can get them into more permanent housing.

Q: There are many programs that help the homeless, but most of them are small scale. Should this program be replicated in other areas? Or is it too soon to say that it works?

A: People may have noticed that we don’t like to call the facility a shelter. At some shelters, the clients or families can stay there up to two years. The objective of this facility once they check in is to move the family into long-term housing within the 90-day goal.

The size of our program has allowed us to create a personal culture that highlights the core values of Catholic Charities Hawai‘i and balances components of our “housing first” strategy. I believe other communities should consider all strategies when it comes to dealing with an effective, client-centered approach to housing placement.

Communities, much like people, have individual characteristics that make them their own and that should be recognized by those who provide the services to them.

Q: Does the center work to keep parents and children together, or have you found the need for foster-home placement for the kids?

A: At times, we’ve worked with Child Protective Services to help reunite families if it falls within our capacity to effectively house them within the 90-day timeframe.

Our program is of the belief that if we are able to help families satisfy the legal, treatment compliance and some of the other general parenting educational requirements that come along with this housing process, that the potential for long-term recovery is greatly improved. Critical to the success of all those things mentioned is housing and environmental stability.

Another goal for the children entering our program is getting them to regularly attend school. When a family is homeless and transient, the children are most likely not attending classes because they don’t consistently live in a designated school district for enrollment.

We’ve been working with the state Department of Education in getting the children placed in area schools. The DOE supplies the children with bus passes and school supplies to help them make the transition. Education is another way we try to break the cycle of homelessness.

Q: What have you learned about the challenges homeless families and social agencies face that the public may not understand?

A: That one agency, organization or entity can’t solve this homelessness problem by itself. Thus far, our program’s successes are contingent on the relationships that the state and Catholic Charities Hawai‘i have formed with other social service providers, volunteers and Kakaako stakeholders who have been willing to help us.

The lesson from all of this is everyone in our community has a role to play in helping resolve the homelessness issue. For example, we’ve had members of the general public donate items like rolls of toilet papers, dish soap and other household items as part of “move out” kits for families moving on to more permanent housing.

Additionally, the clients we work with are incredibly resilient, creative and motivated, yet often times those strengths get overlooked because the challenges surrounding them seem insurmountable.

But as a staff, we understand the complexity of each family goes much deeper than what is often present at the surface — and that has allowed us to be flexible, mindful and supportive of challenges that arise almost daily.