Hawaii’s homeless problem will not get any better; it cannot. Empathy will turn to sympathy, indifference, resentment, anger. Whatever the good people who have devoted themselves to this problem have done to ameliorate the situation, it is simply not working.

Large swaths of our parks and roadsides have become unusable. Unless these unfortunates are given a place to go, continued degradation is guaranteed. We have seen the revolting squalor in L.A., San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. This is where we are headed.

Large-event tents in carefully selected parts of the city to where the homeless can be directed is worth serious consideration. Give them bus passes to come and go. Start removing the seriously mentally disturbed to the psychiatric hospital. Try and connect the coherent ones to a state or city from which they originated.

Expect more of our own, as well as from the mainland. It’s getting uglier by the minute.

Chris DiSante

Makiki

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