Houseless rally on Rice Street

LIHU‘E — About 15 members of the houseless community residing at Lydgate Camp Park rallied their “I am” message in front of the Historic County Building on Rice Street Thursday morning, asking for understanding of their lifestyle and a chance to explain their situation.

The group brought awareness to a recent swath of camp residents that were cited for not having a county permit to camp in the area and have been given a week’s time to relocate.

Demonstrators held up signs that sported the words: “I am”. Some signs continued with a message that read, I am a “human being”, “houseless”, “disabled”, “educated”, or “a victim of domestic violence”.

Among the demonstrators was Donna Macomber, 56, an essential worker at Kapa‘a Safeway. She and her partner Benedict Medina have been houseless since April 23. Macomber didn’t say what caused her to become houseless, but said she cries every night in disbelief about her situation.

“I never imagined myself being homeless. My friends, coworkers, family, especially my two sons who are now young men with families of their own, do not know I am living on the beach,” said Macomber. “I have raised them as a single mom; my eyes fill with tears just thinking of them. I do not want to be a burden in their turn to live their lives.”

Macomber is one of 20 people who have been cited at the Lydgate Camp Park — she’s been directed to move to a West Side camp, while others have been told to relocate to Anini.

Ku‘uleinani “Pua” Kaninau, the campsite organizer, said county park rangers visited their campsite at Lydgate twice last week, handing out citations to reduce the number of people at the camp. At 77 individuals, Lydgate Camp Park is overcapacity, and has been for some time, according to Kaninau.

“The last three weeks we had an issue with our numbers, and they wanted to lower our numbers,” Kaninau said. “Nobody got kicked out yet, but a good portion of people given violations … were here during the first and seconded permitting processing.”

Kaninau said if all 20 cited individuals leave, they would be left with a little over 50 members at their campsite.

Kaninau’s main concern is for individuals with major mental health issues. She reports there are three out of the 20 who are asked to move to Anini Beach that are having difficulty accessing mental health services.

Also among the demonstrators was Cyndi Payne, a houseless individual with a Master’s degree who wants to break the stigma of homelessness.

“I think us out here today is a good representation of what it means to be houseless. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we are dirty or that we live on the street,” said Payne. “At Lydgate, we have a pretty good community. You see us today with clean clothes … homelessness is a stigma, an unfair stigma. It doesn’t matter how educated you are, it doesn’t matter what house you had before … it can happen to anybody.”

That statement rang true for Gregg Winston, who recently had to close his visitor-based business due to the pandemic.

“I’ve been on the lockdown for months, the tourism business that I had for 30 years on Kaua‘i was shut down,” said Winston. “First time in my life I am receiving unemployment and food stamps to take care of my family.”

Winston said he was not aware of the houseless problem on Kaua‘i until he went down to Kamalani Park and saw the encampment.

“I think that everyone in this community knows someone that is homeless, just open up your heart, and go check out these camps,” said Winston. “If you a fisherman, drop off a fish, go check out someone, ask about their well being.”

He continued: “See if you can build a rapport because many of us are just 90 days away from being in that same camp. I am not trying to take credit for helping somebody, but I think everyone should look inside their heart and see if there is something they can do.”

The Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation Wallace Rezentes Jr. said the county is monitoring each houseless camp’s limit capacity around the island.

“The County of Kaua‘i has established camper limits for each beach park. We believe Lydgate is at or near the established limit and we are in the process of confirming the actual numbers,” said Rezentes Jr. “If we determine that the limits are exceeded and other campgrounds can better accommodate our houseless community members, we will assist the campers with the move including providing travel assistance as needed.”

Demonstrators made the journey to the Historic County Building via the Kaua‘i Baptist Church bus, driven by Kaua‘i resident Kemealoha Smith, who said he’s been teaching keiki and supporting their families in Anahola and the coastlines like at Lydgate Beach. Smith is currently running for the Kaua‘i seat of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

“I have been volunteering and helping out the homeless community especially in the last two emergencies. I wanted to use my teaching license to help the kids impacted by COVID-19,” said Smith. “We just started a new program, we are trying to get all the kids that need to get caught up from last semester and we also provide their families support.”

Smith said he believes a lot of people with Hawaiian ancestry do not qualify for Hawaiian benefits because they do not have 50 percent Hawaiian blood and he feels that the Office of Hawaiian Affairs has some kuleana to fix the homelessness issue.

“People get to this point through a lot of different reasons, like the cost of living is very expensive and the amount of money people make does not match the amount of money needed to buy a house or to rent out an apartment,” said Smith. “You could get sick, miss work … all it takes is one low paycheck and then the next thing you know it throws you off for the rest of the year.”

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Stephanie Shinno, features and community reporter, can be reached at 245-0424 or sshinno@thegardenisland.com.