Wailuku facility to
retrain ex-convicts

WAILUKU » Maui Economic Opportunity Inc. will be renovating a Wailuku storefront and apartment complex to develop a facility that houses, trains and helps to employ former prison inmates.

Completion of the $1.6 million renovation of the Vineyard General Store and its rear apartments is expected in a few months, said the group's executive director, Gladys Baisa.

Baisa said the area has a bad reputation, and her group plans to propose a neighborhood watch program.

"We're going to clean up the neighborhood," she said.

Maui County has authorized $600,000 toward the project, and Gov. Linda Lingle announced Tuesday the release of $1 million in state funds to support it.

"Through partnerships with MEO and other organizations, we can provide needed services to help individuals turn their lives around and integrate back into the community," Lingle said.

The facility will be designed to provide a clean and sober place to live for some 20 former inmates, with the goal of increasing their chances of reintegration into society, Baisa said.

"We are grateful to the governor for her leadership on this important issue of concern to so many families in our community," Baisa said.

While being housed at the facility, former inmates will participate in the group's reintegration program, Being Empowered and Safe Together (BEST), which cultivates skills that can be applied in the workplace and community.

The program will receive help from the San Francisco-based Delancey Street Foundation, which will provide use of various components of its program.

Delancey Street officials said a little more than 80 percent of their clients stay out of prison, compared with some 40 percent nationally.

The Delancey Street Foundation focuses on helping ex-felons to help themselves through training and education, including classes at a chartered high school and college classes.

Baisa said former inmates in the Maui program will have similar educational opportunities.

She said clients at the facility in Wailuku, which has a certified commercial kitchen, will generate income to support the program by providing lunch and snacks for 16 preschools on Maui.

Renovation will turn some rooms into dormitory, single-bed and double-bed units.

Baisa said the Delancey Street Foundations uses incentives to reinforce responsible behavior, such as assigning single apartments for performing well in the program.

In San Francisco, clients are required to undergo at least a two-years program at Delancey. The average stay is between three and four years, foundation officials said.

In the early 1990s, the foundation's clients constructed a 400,000-square-foot building in the Embarcadero area that included a restaurant, retail area and 177-unit apartment.

The building provides living quarters for its clients, who receive training and employment at businesses in the facility, including a restaurant, furniture-making business and a furniture-moving company.