CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM A homeless man looked toward the ocean with his belongings after being evicted yesterday from Ala Moana Beach Park.

City homeless sweeps
draw concern

Advocates say more needs to be done
to provide adequate services for the needy

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By Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.com

Hawaii's homeless problem has "finally reached deadlock," said the head of the state's largest homeless shelter after the city's sweep early yesterday of illegal campers at Ala Moana Beach Park.

Lynn Maunakea, the Institute for Human Services' executive director, expressed frustration with the recent sweeps at Ala Moana, Honolulu Airport and Aala Park. She said the state's shelters have long been filled, and service providers have been advocating for permanent housing.

"We don't want to invest more in warehousing people. That's not the solution," she said.

But she acknowledged that another shelter probably must be built because of the lack of housing. "We're almost forced into a corner because of inaction. ... We could be solving the problem, but there doesn't seem to be political will to make it happen."

An estimated 100 illegal campers were chased out of Ala Moana Beach Park early yesterday. City officials said they have received numerous complaints about homeless people in the parks. They said the sweeps will continue three times a week for the next six weeks.

While agreeing that just moving the homeless is not a permanent solution, city officials say they cannot let the campers monopolize park facilities.

Bills pending in the Legislature would appropriate $1 million for each of the next fiscal years to the Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawaii for homeless assistance.

In testifying, Darlene Hein, of the Affordable Housing and Homeless Alliance, cited a 1999 study estimating Hawaii has 1,952 unsheltered homeless and 1,219 in shelters, for a total of 3,171.

Michael Amii, director of the city-county Department of Community Services, told legislators, "Until persons who are homeless are connected with adequate services to deal with underlying problems of poverty, mental illness, drug addiction and others, we will continue to see them in our streets, beaches and public spaces."

Maunakea said: "It's a bad year to ask for money, but how do you expect to work with some difficult, chronically ill people if you don't have enough bodies to do it? We're spinning our wheels."

A federal study found chronically homeless comprise 10 percent of that population and use 50 percent of the resources, she said. These chronically homeless are part of the problem in parks and shelters because of mental illness combined with substance abuse, she said.

"This is the group the feds want us to concentrate on because of the huge impact it can have on the system."

The two to three case managers at the IHS shelters can barely address suicides, let alone try to work one on one with chronically troubled people, she said.

Help is slowly emerging for the chronically homeless with mental illness because of a federal lawsuit against the state 12 years ago alleging violations in treatment of the mentally ill, Maunakea said. "That's where we're finally seeing some hope."

IHS received funding from the Adult Metal Health Division to form a team with several case managers, a nurse, psychiatrist and peer counselors, she said.

Now, they can try to bring in people who live at IHS and disappear during the day with no help available for them, she said. "We've got 40 to 50 people now (for services). We're still hiring and pulling the team together, but we're up and running."

She said service providers are "delighted with the changes" at the Adult Mental Health Division, which she said essentially scrapped its old organization and created a new one.

"We're all moving in the right direction," but things will not happen quickly enough to deal with the fallout from sweeps, she said.