Community reacts to homelessness initiatives at forum

KAILUA-KONA — The message isn’t going to change.

“Housing ends homelessness,” Brandee Menino, CEO of HOPE Services Hawaii, told a standing-room-only crowd Tuesday night at the West Hawaii Civic Center. “We’re here to end homelessness, not manage and prolong homelessness.”

That’s the philosophy of the federal Housing First model: Get the homeless indoors — and not into emergency shelters that often filter individuals back onto the streets, but instead into long-term housing situations.

Then, deal with everything else.

Despite increasingly encouraging homelessness statistics statewide, there remains a considerable distance yet to traverse. That is particularly true in West Hawaii, an area short on permanent, affordable housing and wrap-around service providers.

Menino and several other homelessness experts — including Scott Morishige, Gov. David Ige’s coordinator on homelessness — said as much during the forum organized by Kona Rep. Nicole Lowen. Menino mentioned that while HOPE serviced nearly 1,700 homeless individuals last year, 722 of them were new to the system.

Simply put, wiping out homelessness on Hawaii Island is going to take years. But several community members say they can’t wait that long for help dealing with concerns they’re facing right now.

“We have a steady stream of homeless coming past our door,” said Tess DeMarco, owner of Tess’s Table Arts and Crafts Workshop in the Old Kona Industrial Area. “Just a week and a half ago a group congregated out front. My husband very nicely asked them to move on and they became abusive. They threatened to burn down our building.”

DeMarco said she’s concerned about what the homelessness conundrum in Kona means for the future of her business, and while she acknowledged the panelists’ attempts to answer her questions, she also said they “tiptoed around the topic.”

“Them offering to educate us on how to clean up the mess the homeless make does not help my situation when it’s all about the first impression,” she said. “I deal in families with little children. To have someone out front cracked out on heroin is intimidating. One bad review is the death of a business.”

Those dealing with issues similar to DeMarco don’t necessarily have the luxury of waiting years for results that are, nonetheless, reasonable to hope for.

Permanent housing has proven to lower medical costs, reducing the burden on taxpayers, while making a transient population more reachable. Low barriers to entry allow service providers accessibility to introduce chronically homeless people to drug treatment and mental health care.

It’s a model the state has adopted, in part because crucial federal dollars are tied to making it a priority, and it has trickled down to the county level. It’s also a solution that appears to be working, as statewide Point-In-Time-Count studies over the last two years indicate.

From 2015 to 2016, Hawaii curbed its rate of homelessness. Between 2016 and 2017, the state saw the first decline in the homeless population in almost a decade. Hawaii County led that charge, documenting a 32 percent reduction in homelessness islandwide.

That decline, however, hasn’t been so visible at the Old Airport Park — a popular hub for Kona’s homeless.

Rachel Talasko, a teacher at Kealakehe Elementary School, is part of Kona’s roller derby community, which utilizes the skating rink at the park several times weekly. The women often skate into the night, when police say the area can become dangerous.

Talasko and her teammates spoke of witnessing domestic violence and encountering drug paraphernalia in the park on a regular basis.

“It’s definitely a safety concern, and we try to leave as a group,” she said. “I don’t want to get angry at (the homeless). I generally feel the situation isn’t all their fault. But we bring kids to the rink sometimes or we bring new skaters, and we don’t ever want an unsafe environment. It’s kind of hard to find that balance of who do I get angry at for this situation that’s been created?”

Hawaii County Assistant Housing Administrator Lance Niimi, who was also a part of Tuesday’s panel, addressed the homeless situation at the park.

As he has several times in recent months, Niimi referenced a land swap between the county and Queen Liliuokalani Trust that would allow the temporary relocation of the park’s homeless to a lot above the intersection of Henry Street and Palani Road.

Some homeless, however, have told Niimi personally they aren’t interested in moving out of the park or into permanent housing.

Police and service providers say those individuals tend to struggle more with substance abuse and mental health issues. They are less amenable to traditional strategies to end homelessness and also tend to pose the greatest threats to park goers and adjacent businesses.

Niimi has said the tentative timeline for a park cleanup is August, after which the plan is intensified police enforcement in the area.

Lowen said the point of Tuesday’s forum was to demonstrate to a frustrated public that work is being done and that some progress is being made.

She said it’s difficult to choose just one priority as the most crucial moving forward, but mentioned the park cleanup and getting vacation rentals under control to help with housing inventory as two vital projects.

“It’s become a really dangerous place, and it’s one of our few parks in Kona,” said Lowen, noting it’s a hot spot for keiki to congregate. “I don’t know if the urgency of the situation is clear to some people in the county administration over in Hilo. I know they are waiting for the new location to be ready to do something, but in the meantime maybe they could put more police officers down there or contract with a security company.”