TO OUR READERS
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser and Hawaii News Now are joining forces to report on the ever-worsening homelessness crisis.
While both news organizations will continue to report daily stories on homelessness, we will work together on bigger projects that delve into all aspects of the issue. To reach the widest possible audience for these important projects on this crisis, you will see reports in print, online and on broadcasts.
For example, on this page of the Star-Advertiser and in Hawaii News Now broadcasts on Monday, you will find stories on homeless encampments you might not be aware of and learn details about some of them.
Through stories such as these, we hope to raise awareness among the public — and public officials — about the gravity of the situation and the need to take action to help the homeless and, by doing so, help our community.
Both newsrooms hope you, as readers and viewers, will help with this project by offering comments, observations and suggestions online and in letters to the editor. While a collaboration between two competing newsrooms is unusual, Hawaii’s homelessness crisis requires an unusual approach.
In response to vast opposition from area residents and businesses, the Institute for Human Services has canceled its plans to develop a proposed triage and comfort station for the homeless at a building in Chinatown. Read more
Plans for IHS to use $2.6 million in federal grant money to purchase and renovate a three-story building drew immense opposition from Chinatown businesses, residents and politicians. Read more
Plans for what’s being called a Homeless Triage and CARES Center in Chinatown will be the subject of a “virtual town hall” being held this afternoon by the Institute for Human Services, the project’s sponsor. Read more
For the past seven years of the Caldwell administration, several initiatives to provide homeless services have been launched in Chinatown. Read more
Are you tired of seeing the homeless on our streets, beaches, and in our parks? Are you frustrated that nothing seems to work, no matter how much money and resources we throw at the problem? Are you resentful that during this lockdown they are more visible everywhere? Read more
With the state Legislature re-starting on Monday, nonprofit organizations and the state’s homeless coordinator are warning about a surge in newly homeless families and the need to continue funding social service programs even as the economy shrinks. Read more
About 50 homeless people are staying in tents and being monitored at Keehi Lagoon Beach Park at the Provisional Outdoor Screening and Triage Facility, which is being expanded. Read more
Groups across Hawaii continue the work of trying to get chronically homeless people off the street while bracing for “a big surge” of people who may soon become homeless as workers are furloughed or laid off, or face salary cuts. Read more
More than 50 volunteers, including fire department recruits, helped build dozens of emergency shelters today on Hawaii island to shelter “the most vulnerable homeless individuals.” Read more
Five homeless people from the mainland — including a couple with family on Oahu — arrived in Honolulu over the last 10 days, perhaps drawn by cheap airfares. Read more
City officials on Tuesday signed a right of entry to allow state Department of Health workers to access the 26-room building at 909 Kaamahu Place. Read more
The city bought the building for $9 million to possibly relocate the Sand Island Treatment Center when the city expands its Sand Island wastewater treatment facility. Read more
The Institute for Human Services began taking the temperatures of homeless clients in Waikiki this week and plans to share information about the novel coronavirus in homeless encamp- ments across Oahu. Read more
Question: How many homeless people do they expect in the outreach center in Old Stadium Park (808ne.ws/33kline)? Where will it go after this? Read more
The city is closing up its Homeless Outreach and Navigation for Unsheltered Persons (HONU) program in Waipahu and relocating to Old Stadium Park in Moiliili at noon Monday. Read more
Pu‘uhonua o Wai‘anae has reached a major milestone with a second $150,000 grant from the Nareit Hawaii Community Giving Initiative. Read more
The state would continue to pay half the cost of airfare to send homeless people back to their families on the mainland, the Federated States of Micronesia and beyond, under a wide-ranging homeless services bill. Read more
Lt. Gov. Josh Green’s dream of a statewide system of “kauhale” tiny homes to provide permanent housing for Hawaii’s homeless suffered a setback Tuesday when two House committees voted to study the concept rather than move out a bill that would have provided $20 million for a one-year pilot program. Read more
People in Hawaii were outraged when the New York mayor’s office last year sent a homeless family to an unidentified island with a job and a year’s worth of housing payments. Read more
Oahu was overwhelmed with 6,924 people who became newly homeless in 2019. That number erased the 616 homeless people per month, on average, who were placed into “permanent housing” across all islands. Read more
Outreach workers fanned out across Oahu on Thursday — starting at 4 a.m. — to survey the island’s homeless population in a one-day, compressed census as part of the nationwide Point in Time Count. Read more
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