>> What initiatives are you most excited to tackle in 2025?
This year, IHS is excited to welcome Alana Ola Pono and Kumu Ola Hou as two new sites for individuals wishing to work toward ending their homelessness. We’re also looking to maintain and improve current program streams internally and with service partners. Though many think of IHS as only the Sumner Men’s Shelter or these new kauhale sites, we have in our immediate continuum 18 service sites with nine core programs; maintaining these program offerings is a feat in itself. Our shelters alone annually provide refuge for over 1,500 individuals. Moreover, over the past few years, IHS has partnered with tech leader NEC to develop a smartphone app used primarily by our outreach teams and clinical case managers, improving care coordination for unsheltered and sheltered individuals, often high utilizers of emergency services. We’re excited to help other agencies join the collaboration.
>> Community partners are an integral part Hawaii’s effort to address homelessness. How can they best contribute to cooperative solutions?
At IHS we believe: healing doesn’t happen in isolation, it happens with community. The same goes for ending cycles of homelessness; it’s not one person or agency’s burden to carry alone, it happens when we work together — as a community — with a shared goal. Many clients receive assistance from more than one private and/or public agency. To truly end homelessness, we as a collective of providers need to identify and address the pukas in our systems of care. In resolving these gaps, more households can obtain stable housing and avoid falling back into homelessness. Moreover, we need the community at large to welcome and invite these households to be integrated into our neighborhoods and activities when they move in.
>> How does the Kumu Ola Hou kauhale, which focuses on treating trauma, behavioral and mental health issues, integrate with IHS’ overarching mission?
Since our very beginning, IHS has prioritized addressing mental health in the journey to permanent housing. Life touched by homelessness is rough, whether you’re sheltered or unsheltered. Kumu Ola Hou was designed with trauma-informed principles and will pilot a specialized transitional shelter in the state and county’s continuum of homeless services and shelters. While all our staff and sites operate with a client-first approach, this site allows greater attention to healing trauma due to its size and design. A big mahalo to B+HARI for the work they put into designing Kumu Ola Hou to be a place that fosters holistic growth and healing through personal practices based on Native Hawaiian values and principles.
>> Where does IHS stand on the “Return to Home Program”?
The Return to Home Relocation Program is IHS’ first statewide program and has proven successful in reuniting households, connecting individuals with in-patient treatment programs, and being part of ending cycles of homelessness. The program began on a local level, by private funders for nearly a decade before the state made it an Office on Homelessness and Housing Solutions pilot. This legislative session, we’re hoping to see it become a permanent program (House Bill 212). We’re proud that it’s been effective in helping individuals return to their communities of care and freeing up our local resources for residents.
>> What areas of need are most pressing for Hawaii’s homeless community?
When thinking about ending homelessness, we have to look at the overall system. For example, if we get more people off the streets and into shelter, then we need to be able to transition them from shelter to housing, and have support for independent living once they’re housed, including for those with fixed incomes.
We’ve seen among our shelter guests an increase in the level of care and treatment required by them. We’ve seen greater need for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment at varying levels of readiness for change. This trend led us to champion the creation of more shelters for various specialized needs, to provide safe spaces, and why we collaborated with the state to create ‘Imi Ola Piha Homeless Triage and Treatment Center. SUD can often be a form of self-medicating trauma and mental illness for those experiencing homelessness. When left untreated, its effects can become seemingly insurmountable barriers to housing.
In this legislative session, we’re working to establish this center as a program within the Department of Health, ensuring that those who are ready are able to access stabilization and detox (HB 943). Along with SUD treatment, we need more shelter and housing options to accommodate different ranges and complexities of need. We also need communities to welcome and embrace individuals as they continue a life of recovery and integration into our society — which is a great place for you to get involved, if you’re not already.
THE BIO FILE
>> Title: Community relations manager for the Institute for Human Services
>> Education: Master of public administration (MPA), University of Washington Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance; master of public policy (MPP), Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; bachelor of science, English: communications from Corban University in Salem, Ore.
>> Background: Born in Tokyo, raised in Okinawa, then moved to Hawaii after receiving undergraduate degree in Oregon.
