Photo op ignores chronic nature of homelessness

On Tuesday, Gov. David Ige held a press conference below the H-1 freeway viaduct and proclaimed the cleanup of the huge homeless encampment “complete.”

It was reminiscent of President George W. Bush standing on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 under a banner that read “Mission Accomplished.”

Oh really.

American troops are still in Iraq, and only a dozen of the almost 200 homeless people who were rousted from under the H-1 accepted the offer of going to a homeless shelter. There’s a big difference between a photo op and a problem solved.

Ige may have been trying to make up for his last embarrassing press conference on this topic when he touted the success of the Kakaako warehouse-turned-homeless shelter just steps away from the filth and destructiveness of a homeless encampment whose members had taken over the park and broken most of its infrastructure.

This time the before and after images were real, and the amount of work that had been done was impressive. For a half-million taxpayer dollars, it should have been. And this time Ige rolled out some promises about how the state is not going to let it get that bad again — even though it got that bad during the past two years of his administration.

This time there are going to be security guards. And a fence. And the rail project contractors are going to store materials in that spot. Mission accomplished. Heck of a job, Davey.

There was even optimistic talk about how some of the folks who had been living under the freeway called their families and were welcomed home. Hope so. Really hope so.

But the very next day in the heart of downtown Honolulu in the middle of the morning, there was a guy waking up from a nap in the newly planted bushes of the newly remodeled Princess Victoria Kamamalu State Office Building across from Iolani Palace. In plain view of the tax-paying, Reyn’s-wearing, time sheet-filling public waiting at the corner for the light to change, he stretched and yawned, relieved himself in the bushes, rolled up his brown blanket and moved on to his next flop.

The symbolism of this gesture — spraying on state property without even trying to hide — says everything you need to know about who has the upper hand in this contest of wills.

The governor got bad campaign advice. He shouldn’t have been anywhere near that freeway cleanup because everyone knows it’s a show — those people didn’t miraculously go and seek help or shelter when they were rousted.

They simply packed their carts, headed down Nimitz toward town and are somewhere peeing in the bushes today. If they’re going to insist on being homeless, maybe better to let them be them under the freeway than have them move into neighborhoods.

Ige wheeled a podium onto the dirt and wore a camera-ready suit while he proclaimed the cleanup “complete” in a soundbite ready for inclusion in a campaign commercial.

He kept a straight face as he confidently asserted that things will be different now.

“We have turned this corner. This is a very important milestone,” he said with all the smug self-assurance of the small lady telling the family in the “Poltergeist” movie, “This house is clean.”

We all know what happens next.

“They’re back.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.