The World According to Cheever: June 2010

The day started out in Waianae with a panel discussion moderated by Debbie Kim Morikawa, Director of the City and County of Honolulu Department of Community Services and featuring: Teresa Gonsalves and Dodie Rivers from the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center; Shannon Hayes from US VETS; Valerie Tavai from the Honolulu Community Community action Program; Sophina Valencia from Waianae Community Outreach; Fred Saunders from the Dept. of Community Services; and Captain Mitchell Kiyuna from the Honolulu Police Department.
Debbie Kim Morikawa started off the discussion by describing the scope and mission of the Department of Community Services
— $76 million budget
— youth/elderly services
— homeless
— economic development
Many services are delivered by private, non-profit organizations.

Shannon Hayes explained how U.S. VETS works. It is a state-funded non-profit that serves as an emergency and transition shelter. They have 300 clients, half of whom are children. The population can stay in the shelter up to two years. The population features both extremes— those coming from the beach and those coming from structures living arrangements.
— 70-80% of the populations used to be Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian; now they’re seeing more and more Micronesians.
— 90-95% have substance abuse issues— ice, marijuana, opiates
Their goal is to help the population become self-sufficient. The average stay is eight months and so far they have transitioned 68% of their population successfully.

From Shannon we learned that in order to enter a shelter, a person needs two “verification of homeless letters.” Those are usually written by Waianae Community Outreach and the Waianae Community Comprehensive Health Center after two contact with a person in a homeless situation.

Teresa Gonsalves and Dodie Rivera then talked about their mobile health services, entitlements counseling (insurance, Food Stamps), transportation services, housing application help, and Legal Aid. The ages of their clients range from younger than 1 up to 60. They’ve found that their population is mostly from Hawai’i with only 1% (so far) comprised of mainland transplants.

Sophina Placencia spoke of how her agency does outreach four days a week to get people into their two emergency shelters that provide many of the same services.

Valerie Tavai spoke at length about changing perceptions of homeless people about themselves and by the community. In her view, one of the main reasons for homelessness is that there is a lot of hurt in Waianae caused by abuse of all kinds— drug, physical, mental, sexual, neglect. There has also been a steady marginalization of poor communities due to gentrification. In order to counteract that trend there needs to be several steps taken:
— hire from the community
— raise expectations of homeless people
— education
— mentoring/modeling by others successful people
Here is where I started to wonder about the utility of micro-lending in this community. Could there be entrepreneurs in need of a small loan to give them that opportunity that would change their lives? Or even a small loan that could give a family the cushion to go to school to get that certification that could lead to a better job? This community is so tight and the shelters keep such close tabs on their clients it seems like they would have the best insights as to who would be worthy of getting those loans and capable of paying them back. It seems like the Pacific Century Fellows program could help provide the funds to create such a program and the business and banking mentoring to help them succeed. I’ve spoken with a bunch of people about whether that could work (Kive, ProFounder) and how it might work. We’ll see how that develops.

Fred Saunders spoke about the “One Stop Center” concept funded by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. It covers all people in a community that fall below certain income thresholds who need help becoming relatively self-sufficient— education (at Leeward Community College), employment training, job search skills such as interviewing and resume building. There is also the “Rent to Work,” a one-year program that assists with permanent housing as long as people maintain employment and seek to improve themselves.

Finally, HPD spoke of how they are there to assist people instead of busting them. In their words, “homelessness is not a crime.” They seek to enforce existing laws such as park closures and parking lot closures so that the homeless are forced to take advantage of the wide variety of services available to them at the many shelters. (Two new laws will also help in this regard: the definition of a tent— only structures with one side are allowed in city parks; no shopping carts in city parks.) What they’ve found is that the homeless rarely are the ones committing crimes; for the most part it is criminal elements hiding out in homeless areas. As a result, the homeless are unfairly blamed fro crimes committed in their areas.

My ultimate take-away from this very informative one-hour discussion is that the homelessness issue is even more complicated than I previously understood, but that there are also more agencies and dedicated individuals than I realized doing a tremendous amount of work to alleviate the symptoms and address the root causes. It would be exciting to be part of the solution to this issue that affects all of us on O’ahu.

On our way to Ma’ili Ulu Ke Kukui Transitional Housing for Families we stopped by “Guard Rails,” a homeless encampment located right next to the highway. There we met Junior Atisanoe (brother of Saleva’a, a.k.a. Konishiki) who works for the Department of Human Services and the Hawaii Public Husing Authority as Project Coordinator. Junior’s message as well as that of the “mayor” of Guard Rails is that the homeless aren’t criminals and they’re not all drug addicts. Many of them work and many of them are trying to improve themselves so that they can get off the beach. It was important for us to see people who are not in shelters but who may be the next ones to take that step. It didn’t feel like any of them are lost causes and put a human face on the homeless, for sure.

At Ulu Ke Kukui we met Fanchon Young, the site director. She explained that their state-funded agency has five buildings with 80 units, (42 beds, and 22 studios) and they serve at-risk and homeless families (as opposed to just homeless at other shelters). In order to qualify for space at Ulu Ke Kukui a family must have children, some form of income, and stay drug and alcohol free. There is a small fee for a unit and a family can stay for up to 24 months. Their population is mostly Hawaiian, but they have an increasingly diverse clientele. They offer programs in skills training, economic development, organic farming/gardening, and a community kitchen where virtually anyone from the community can get a free breakfast or dinner seven days a week. (Jeff Lapilio is the kitchen manager.) They also work with the Waianae Business Center to offer an entrepreneurship program.

While we ate an excellent lunch at Kahumanu Organic Farm and Café, Joe Lapilio, the chief Adminsitrative Officer of Alternative Structures International spoke to us about the causes of homelessness and what he’s learned in his work in this area. Corrorating what many of the other speakers mentioned, homelessness is caused by the cost of living, lack of financial management education, and drug abuse (mostly Ice). Having grown up in Waianae he knows that there has always been some form of homelessness and there always will be to some extent. From his experience he’s concluded that the needs of the homeless are specific to the individuals (due to mental illness, substance abuse, attitudinal, behavioral, and psychological issues, and even an attachment to their pet— most shelters won’t allow them) so we can’t just lump them all together with a once-size-fits-all approach. That’s why they offer such a wide variety of service and training for their clients.

Some of the other business programs at Ulu Ke Kukui feature connections with Hawaii Technical Institute and providing micro-enterprise loans and training through a grant from Pacific Gateway. As we walked to the bus I spoke with Joe about the idea of micro-lending to expand the scope of the micro-enterprises program. He seemed interested in the prospect so I sent him the information from Kiva.org on how to become a Field Partner so that they could possibly link up with that network of donors. If that doesn’t work then maybe we would need to build something of our own from the ground up that is driven and supported by members of Pacific Century Fellows and then opened up to the wider community on O’ahu and Hawaii. One message that kept getting expressed over and over is that the homeless problem is everybody’s problem so we can all play a part is its solution. That may take the form of direct action working with homeless individuals and families, or it can be in the form of indirect actions such as advocacy or providing opportunities (jobs, access to credit) that might have been possible previously.

We then ventured to Sand Island Treatment Center where we heard from Cathy, Yvonne, and Kevin about their experiences as former clients and current employees. SITC has been around since 1960 so it is the oldest licensed treatment center in the Pacific. There seemed to be widespread admiration for their boss, L. Mason Henderson, for the work he has done over the years in addressing some of the most intractable issues related to substance abuse. What he did upon arriving at SITC is he went into the prisons and too out some of the worst offenders and treated them. That solidified his reputation and that of the center so that now the courts refer offenders to SITC rather than throwing them directly in jail.

SITC only hires staff from the treatment population. The treatment period is a two year residential program, but the challenge is that most insurance companies won’t pay for more than a few months. SITC prides itself on treating the individual and not the funding source so somehow they make it happen as long as the person wants to stay there. 70-75% of the residents have an Ice addiction with some marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol. The treatment is based on the 12-step program. They believe alcoholism and drug addiction are diseases; they believe in accountability; if you undertreat an addiction then the addict becomes more resistant to treatment in the future— like any other disease. (When I asked the speakers if they believed, based on their personal experience and their work at SITC, if marijuana is a ‘gateway’ drug, they all said that it was not. To paraphrase Kevin: “If people are going to make that jump into Ice, it’s not going to be because they tried marijuana. They were going there anyway.”)

After treatment the clients move into the transition period where they work to get acclimated to living on their own. They get money management skills and try to live on $20 a week. The third stage of the program is the after-care/probation period which has a 90% success rate 1 year after the two year treatment regimen. The speakers made reference to the HOPE court set up by Judge Steven Alm which was reported on in the latest Honolulu Magazine.

SITC focuses on women first because they have the most trouble accessing treatement, Their first priority is pregnant women and then women prone to exploitation.

What they’ve found is that budget cuts are leading to more and more violent incidents due to people going off their medications.