KAILUA-KONA — Mayor Harry Kim said Monday the county has waited long enough.
A planned clean up of the Old Airport Park, set to coincide with the permanent relocation of the some 50-70 homeless individuals that reside there, has been a top priority of the administration since Kim assumed office.
The homeless exodus has been discussed for awhile and was originally scheduled for April but then postponed. Kim said a meeting with various county departments and social services providers will be convened this week, during which a firm date for the project will be set.
“The cleanup plans are finished,” he said. “It’s a matter of policy. These are community parks. We don’t allow the community to camp there, so we shouldn’t allow anyone to camp there.”
The mayor shouldered responsibility for the project’s delay, explaining the issue has always been planning well enough to make sure the action produces sustainable results.
“It was quite obvious after that plan was made that it was shortsighted of me,” he said. “Just to clean it up would be kind of foolhardy unless we had real, comprehensive type programs in regards of where to (send the homeless).”
The cleanup will close down the park for a couple of days, after which increased police enforcement will focus on keeping the area clear of homeless encampments that have popped up across the park, been shut down and resurfaced again in cyclical fashion for years.
The question of how to break that pattern remains, and Kim has struggled with the problem of displacing dozens who are already displaced.
The county is in discussions with the Queen Liliuokalani Trust about a land swap that would transfer a parcel of trust land above the Palani Road and Henry Street intersection to the county in return for a couple acres of county-owned industrial lot property near the Friendly Place in the Kona Old Industrial Area.
While Kim said that conversation is positive and will continue, what he envisions for that site — transitional housing and an array of services — will take far too long to develop to be an immediate answer to the question of where to send the Old Airport’s homeless.
Thus, aside from establishing a date to begin the cleanup at the Old Airport Park, the mayor and his team will also decide at their meeting this week on a short-term site to serve as an alternate living space for dozens of homeless with nowhere else to go.
“Even that is running into problems because we don’t want it in the middle of everywhere, but we don’t want (the homeless) so far away that they won’t stay there,” Kim said. “They need places to be accessible to what their needs are.”
Multiple potential sites have been identified, Kim added, but said their specific locations won’t be released until one is decided upon later this week. The chosen site may be outdoors but also might have some type of overhead shelter.
Wherever it ends up, the site will be equipped with running water, security and portable toilets.
Director of Parks and Recreation Charmaine Kamaka said in the interim her department will continue the work it’s done over the last several weeks to mitigate the ill effects of the homeless presence within the park.
“The sum total of what I can do short of calling the police, which we’re not doing unless we’ve got flagrant violation of the law, is we call social services and try to get people the services that they need,” Kamaka said. “Right now, there are service providers that do have temporary housing available, and so it’s a matter of communicating that to the people that are homeless and getting them to take advantage of those services.”
Hawaii’s 2017 Point-in-Time Count study indicated homelessness has dropped by 32 percent on Hawaii Island in the last year, the first decrease in nearly a decade.
Brandee Menino, CEO of HOPE Services Hawaii, said the day-to-day work of her organization and the numbers it has gathered reflects a sizable dip in homelessness. Because of that, the emergency shelter at the HOPE campus in the industrial area has more vacancies than at any other time in the last five years.
When a parks employee identifies potential homeless, they pass that information along to Kamaka who shares it with HOPE, after which an outreach worker is dispatched to the area to establish a connection.
Kim said it can take several meetings, however, before a deep enough trust is established that some contacted members of the homeless community feel comfortable accepting help from someone who is otherwise a stranger.
But even filling every room in HOPE’s emergency shelter would only put a dent in the homeless population at the Old Airport Park, so a temporary site must be established until more transitional or permanent affordable housing is built.
Hawaii Island’s movement to clear the park comes on the heels of similar efforts on both Oahu and Maui.
A release from the Department of Land and Natural Resources in March noted efforts of DOCARE officers to clear several homeless individuals, and tons of rubbish, off the slopes of Diamond Head on Oahu. The DLNR said more than 40 “camps or rubbish locations” had been identified on Diamond Head.
Earlier this month, a warning was issued to some 100 homeless individuals living in and around Baldwin Beach Park on Maui that they had until today to vacate the area.
Gov. David Ige said in an interview with WHT in mid-May that clearing places like the Old Airport Park and Baldwin Beach Park is a vital element to the state’s overall strategy to combat homelessness, which isn’t just about getting people off the streets.
“(Another) part of the program is about public spaces and ensuring that public spaces remain open to the public,” Ige said. “We have been involved in getting into the various collections of homeless people, providing them counseling, trying to do an assessment and giving them options to move into a permanent housing situation.”