KAILUA-KONA — Mayor Harry Kim said Monday the county has waited long enough.
KAILUA-KONA — Mayor Harry Kim said Monday the county has waited long enough.
A planned cleanup of Old Kona Airport Park in Kailua-Kona, set to coincide with the permanent relocation of the some 50 to 70 homeless people who reside there, has been a top priority of the administration since Kim assumed office.
The homeless exodus has been discussed for awhile and originally was scheduled for April, but was postponed. Kim said a meeting with various county departments and social services providers will be convened this week, during which a firm date for the project will be set.
“The cleanup plans are finished,” he said. “It’s a matter of policy. These are community parks. We don’t allow the community to camp there, so we shouldn’t allow anyone to camp there.”
The mayor shouldered responsibility for the project’s delay, explaining the issue has always been planning well enough to make sure the action produces sustainable results.
“It was quite obvious after that plan was made that it was shortsighted of me,” he said. “Just to clean it up would be kind of foolhardy unless we had real, comprehensive type programs in regards of where to (send the homeless).”
The cleanup will close down the park for a couple of days, after which increased police enforcement will focus on keeping the area clear of homeless encampments that have popped up throughout the park in cyclical fashion for years.
The question of how to break that pattern remains, and Kim has struggled with the problem of displacing dozens who already are displaced.
The county is in discussions with the Queen Liliuokalani Trust about a land swap that would transfer a parcel of trust land above the Palani Road and Henry Street intersection to the county in return for a couple of acres of county-owned industrial lot property near the Friendly Place in the Kona Old Industrial Area.
While Kim said that conversation is positive and will continue, what he envisions for that site — transitional housing and an array of services — will take far too long to develop to be an immediate answer to the question of where to send the Old Kona Airport Park’s homeless.
Thus, aside from establishing a date to begin the cleanup, the mayor and his team also will decide on a short-term site to serve as an alternate living space for dozens of homeless with nowhere else to go.
“Even that is running into problems because we don’t want it in the middle of everywhere, but we don’t want (the homeless) so far away that they won’t stay there,” Kim said. “They need places to be accessible to what their needs are.”
Multiple potential sites have been identified, Kim added. The chosen site might be outdoors but also might have some type of overhead shelter. Wherever it ends up, the site will be equipped with running water, security and portable toilets.
Director of Parks and Recreation Charmaine Kamaka said in the interim her department will continue the work it’s done during the past several weeks to mitigate the ill effects of the homeless presence within the park.
“The sum total of what I can do short of calling the police, which we’re not doing unless we’ve got flagrant violation of the law, is we call social services and try to get people the services that they need,” Kamaka said. “Right now, there are service providers that do have temporary housing available, and so it’s a matter of communicating that to the people that are homeless and getting them to take advantage of those services.”
Hawaii’s 2017 Point-in-Time Count study indicated homelessness has decreased by 32 percent on Hawaii Island in the past year, the first decrease in nearly a decade.
Email Max Dible at mdible@westhawaiitoday.com.