Pulama Ola Kauhale, the quick-built medical respite community of tiny homes across Punchbowl Street from Queen’s Hospital is closing, having operated successfully for the six months Gov. Josh Green asked for. Other respite shelters are open and available to take in those who need this kind of care, but the closure nonetheless leaves a gap in shelter options Downtown. What next for Honolulu, and Oahu?

Green and Mayor Rick Blangiardi have pledged collaboration to push projects to shelter homeless people in urban Honolulu. Yet even as the Downtown kauhale closes, other unsheltered people throughout the Capitol District will remain. The kauhale served them, too: About 800 people have used showers and restrooms or received other services at the site, in addition to the 20 housing units.

Given the effectiveness and utility of the Queen’s Hospital- adjacent kauhale, we now know these kauhale can be raised quickly — and with on-site staffing for treatment and security, are a solution to problems experienced with unmonitored homeless encampments.

It’s also necessary to push action forward with all urgency on planned kauhale, which have the potential to make a clear difference on Oahu and statewide. The communal kauhale provide hope and much-needed services to those without shelter; they also can help to clear spaces now serving as de facto homeless shelters — parks, playgrounds, sidewalks, creek beds and culverts — that are not healthy or appropriate places to sleep, or live.

The city’s CORE homeless outreach team responds to crisis calls and provides care and referrals, including facilitated entry to Pulama Ola Kauhale. Going forward, medically fragile people who need crisis care can be offered medical respite care at Honolulu’s H4 homeless housing project in Iwilei, operated by the Kalihi-Palama Health Center, or the Institute for Human Services-run Tutu Bert’s House.

CORE, the city’s mobile service, goes to homeless people where they are, including city streets, to offer shelter, medical aid and information.

Project Vision Hawaii, which ran Pulama Ola, will operate a nine-unit kauhale in Iwilei and a 33-unit kauhale in Kaneohe near the State Hospital in Kaneohe. Those, like the Downtown kauhale, will help unsheltered people who have been recently discharged from hospitals; the new kauhale also will offer treatment for people in need of mental health services.

The Iwilei and Kaneohe kauhale, the first to focus on homeless mental health issues, are expected to open in January and be fully operational by February. They certainly can’t come soon enough.

What Project Vision learned from Pulama Ola is that unsheltered people, including the medically fragile, can have a wide range of needs — but providing a sense of community by involving residents in decisionmaking and with a sense of purpose are important. Establishing common duties such as gardening, helping with meals or passing out necessities goes a very long way toward establishing order and responsibility within a kauhale.

These are also lessons that have become clear from the operation of two existing kauhale, in Waimanalo and Kalealoa, both of which have operated without serious complication or negative headlines for more than two years now.

During the pandemic, in 2020, kauhale Hui Mahi‘ai ‘Aina in Waimanalo, Hawaii’s first, was developed with a mix of tiny homes and tents by community members and volunteers on state land rented by Waimanalo resident Blanche McMillan. Residents are offered an opportunity to work in community gardens on site, and to choose leaders to help with cleaning, food prep and other needed activities. The kauhale has grown from a handful of tiny homes to host as many as 50 units, all constructed by residents and experienced volunteers.

U.S. Vets operates the Kama‘oku Kauhale at Kalealoa with 36 units, 10 reserved for veterans, and shared kitchen, restroom, shower and laundry facilities within a community center that includes a medical clinic. That kauhale, built under supervision from HomeAid Hawaii, moved in its first residents on Dec. 1, 2021.

The governor’s list of kauhale includes several in advanced planning stages, including targeted numbers of occupants and tentative opening dates.

These include: Waikiki Vista, housing 125; a Middle Street Kauhale, housing 54; the Windward Mental Health Kauhale, with 25 residents; the Iwilei Mental Health Kauhale; and a Central Maui Kauhale, housing 200.

The 12 tiny homes from Pulama Ola are moving in the coming week to the kauhale site on Middle Street, and that is welcome.

Green has said $65 million in approved state funding is immediately available for kauhale. It’s important to get that money moving into the communities where they are needed.