HONOLULU — Gov. Neil Abercrombie said Tuesday he plans to tackle homelessness over the short term with a new 90-day plan that would provide mental health services and help people move into housing. The governor and his coordinator on homelessness,
HONOLULU — Gov. Neil Abercrombie said Tuesday he plans to tackle homelessness over the short term with a new 90-day plan that would provide mental health services and help people move into housing.
The governor and his coordinator on homelessness, Marc Alexander, also hope to convince churches and others who feed homeless in public parks not to do so because such efforts give homeless an incentive to stay where they are.
Abercrombie’s team came up with the plan as a way to jump-start their new homeless initiatives in the administration’s early months.
“This puts the pressure on us to deliver,” the governor said at a news conference announcing the plan, which takes effect immediately and is due to last through Aug. 17.
The new initiatives are kicking in just before President Barack Obama hosts a major international conference — the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum — in Waikiki in November. Abercrombie said the timing wasn’t deliberate, but instead a “happy coincidence.”
The cash-strapped state hasn’t allocated any additional funds for the plan, Abercrombie said. Instead it aims to maximize use of funds already budgeted for homelessness, and attract both federal funding and money from private foundations.
“We’re swimming in the water we’re in. We’re going to take the budgets we have,” the governor said.
The plan doesn’t address how to boost affordable housing and increase job training, both of which experts believe are critical to solving the problem. The administration said measures to address these issues would come in a later plan that focuses on longer-term initiatives.
“This idea of a 90-day plan emerged not a solution but as another step. This is a long, long journey,” Alexander said.
Even so, Alexander said he hopes a significant number of people will have moved off the street and that people will notice a difference by mid-August..
The plan calls for repairing shelters and getting the most vulnerable directly into housing, where possible.
Alexander noted some people don’t want to go into a shelter but are willing to move into an apartment if one is available. Alexander said a network of homeless service providers and agencies were working to identify units homeless could move into, and some landlords had agreed to participate and have even relaxed their standards regarding credit histories.
Alexander said five people living in Aala Park next to Honolulu’s Chinatown neighborhood have recently moved into permanent housing as part of a similar effort.
The state is also talking to the University of Hawai‘i’s medical school, insurance groups and community groups about developing more mental health service options for the homeless.
Abercrombie and Alexander also hope to decrease the incentives for people to live in parks and sidewalks — including convincing church groups and others to stop feeding people in parks.
“The idea of simply feeding people who may have the opportunity to feed themselves is something that we can’t countenance,” Abercrombie said.
Alexander said some church groups are realizing that their programs to feed the homeless in parks are not helping homeless get jobs or housing. He said he hopes to persuade these groups to help out at shelters and feed homeless there.
Nathan Eagle – The Garden Island
LIHU‘E — Some of the homeless residents on Kaua‘i had a tepidresponse to the 90-day plan Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s administrationlaunched Tuesday.
A 55-year-old Lihu‘e man living in a “rusty van on a dead-endstreet” said the system has serious flaws.
Marty Martins, who has been homeless for the better part of thepast three decades, said he wants to unite people living on thestreets so they can collectively deal with the issue.
“They want to micromanage people’s lives,” he said of some of thehomeless programs he has experienced. “You should cut your hair.You should do this. You should do that. If you want to get someoneto paint the kitchen, I’m going to go with someone who’s going toget the job done. I don’t care if they need to shave or need a haircut.
“It’s a serious attempt at social engineering,” he said. “You know,I like my eight beers a day. I don’t feel like listening to someonetrying to make me feel guilty about it. I haven’t smoked in 30years. I don’t need to listen to someone tell me I shouldn’tsmoke.”
If he had the power, Martins said he would reform laws that hethinks contribute to homelessness.
For instance, he said the country needs to give preferentialtreatment to American citizens seeking employment. The outsourcingof jobs in America also needs to stop, he added.
“They’re bringing in people from third-world countries, exploitingthe situation over there. And they want to say it’s our fault,”Martins said. “The rich are getting richer. The poor are gettingpoorer.”
A study by two esteemed economists that was published Sunday in TheNew York Times showed that “the rich have gotten richer — incomefor the top 1 percent rose by $261,930, or 30 percent, from 2002 to2008 — while the bottom 90 percent saw their incomes drop by$1,170, or 4 percent, on an inflation adjusted basis.”
Martins said, “Teaching someone how to fill out a resume is notgoing to solve homelessness. It might get someone who’s homelessinto a job, but push someone out of one.”
Less exclusionary shelters are also needed, he said, referring toplaces that only offer transitional housing to certaindemographics.
“If I was a homosexual, I’d have a place to live. Or if I was awoman, I’d have housing. Or if I lied on my application and said Ihad AIDS, I’d have housing,” Martins said. “They should treat usall as equals.”
He said he supports rehabilitation programs for drug users,measures that result in spending less money on putting peoplebehind bars and better safeguards to ensure people aren’t milkingthe system.
“Many people have the same problems as me, they just never gotlabeled,” Martins said.
