For law enforcement, they’re a continual challenge. For business owners, a plain nuisance. Even the homeless lining Pahoa’s quaint streets don’t necessarily want to be there, either. ADVERTISING For law enforcement, they’re a continual challenge. For business owners, a plain
For law enforcement, they’re a continual challenge. For business owners, a plain nuisance. Even the homeless lining Pahoa’s quaint streets don’t necessarily want to be there, either.
“You think this is my goal in life?” said wheelchair user John Hartley, 57, a chronically homeless Pahoa resident to a scattering of business owners Wednesday. “Hell no. I was a world-renowned chef; this was not my goal.”
In Pahoa, community members are trying a different approach to help mitigate the town’s growing homeless problem — meeting with them.
Roughly 30 people — which included business leaders, law enforcement and up to 10 chronically homeless people — convened at the Pahoa Village Museum for a community breakfast aimed at opening dialogue and brainstorming solutions.
Wednesday’s breakfast was the second event of its kind — the group gathered for a first time last month.
“It’s not because I want to bother you guys or I’m trying to harass you,” Pahoa Officer Davy Kamalii told the group seated around the room munching on pastries. “(But) when the community has a concern, I address it.”
“I understand the law, I know your view,” Hartley replied. “I’m not asking for special treatment but just a little bit of leniency. I’ll be rolling down the road (in my wheelchair) and you guys roll up … sometimes I feel like, ‘What do you guys want me to do? Hide in a corner and curl up and die?’”
Hartley said he often feels misunderstood — most of his life he earned a living but has since fallen on hard times. He said talking to police at the meeting felt empowering.
“Like we’re on an equal level,” he said.
And for Sarah Williams, museum volunteer director and brainchild of the breakfast, that’s exactly the goal. Williams started the breakfast partly out of frustration — she’d arrive to the museum each morning and find homeless individuals slumped outside front and back.
“We were like, ‘This is just totally out of hand,’” she said. “I would resent and hate them and I’d have horrible mornings every morning because I couldn’t stand all these people out here. Finally, it became like, ‘Let’s work together instead of hating each other. Because this is miserable.’”
Statistics indicate the number of homeless people on Hawaii Island is growing. Unofficial numbers from the Homeless Point in Time Count earlier this year showed at least 1,300 people were sleeping unsheltered, up from 1,241 last year. In 2013, that number was 557.
Statewide, up to 15,000 people are homeless at some point during the year, according to statistics from HOPE Services, and at least 14 percent are veterans. Another 22 percent have some sort of employment, statistics show, and at least 32 percent are of Native Hawaiian ethnicity. Another 11 percent are children.
“It’s a really complex issue,” said County Prosecuting Attorney Mitch Roth. “You can’t classify all homeless people (the same) … we have some decent people, some really good people and also some people who have serious mental health issues and are problematic. We as a society have not done a good job addressing those issues.
“We need to … come up with better solution and solve this problem,” he continued. “(The breakfast) was not the end all, be all, but it starts the conversation — how do we do this better?”
Breakfast attendees mulled a variety of solutions. Outdoor showers would help the homeless appear more presentable each day, one person said. Another person rebutted — that’s been tried in the past but didn’t work. Another mused — how about a shelter based in Pahoa?
“It would be great if there was real movement and change,” Williams said, noting she’s planning for meetings to continue but doesn’t have dates yet. “And that comes from all of us learning how to work together. I’m hoping Pahoa can be a model for the rest of the nation in how to deal with the homeless problem because I think there’s a way to work together and have everyone be an asset. We may not agree on everything but if we can work together, that’s a beautiful thing.”
Williams also is spearheading several beautification projects for homeless people in the area to help with, including shoe planters that now line the back of the museum. She’s fundraising through GoFundMe to raise money for a permaculture drop-in greenhouse. For more information about the greenhouse effort, visit www.gofundme.com/bigilove.
Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
