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What does it say about the state Legislature when only two lawmakers showed up for a hearing on dealing with Hawaii’s growing homeless problem?

Sure, it’s summer, and the Legislature is not in full session from early May to mid January.

But of the 13 members of the House Committee on Housing, and of the nine members of the House Committee on Human Services, only committee chairs Rida Cabanilla and John Mizuno managed to make it to the joint informational briefing that they themselves had scheduled.

The apathy was underscored by the absence of a few public agency directors who sent underlings in their stead.

About midway through Wednesday’s hearing, Rep. Roland Sagum came into the room and pulled up a chair. “I was watching it on TV in my office,” said Sagum, a Kauai representative and a member of the housing committee. “We’re really hurting on Kauai.”

Despite all the pain, homelessness has had difficulty attracting legislative action, and a big reason is because it costs money to build and maintain shelters and to help with services such as health, education and public safety.

The most significant affordable housing measure passed out of the 2010 session, , establishes a Housing First Special Fund to support a program to help homeless people get on their feet so they can eventually move out and rent on their own. Cabanilla and Mizuno co-sponsored the bill, basing the program on a mainland model.

But cash-strapped lawmakers didn’t find a way to pay for the fund, and the bill struggled to make it out of both chambers. State and county officials objected to kicking in a share, while developers like Alexander & Baldwin and trade groups like the Hawaii Association of Realtors balked at building the fund by increasing a portion of the conveyance tax on the sale of homes valued above $1.2 million.

Instead, HB 2318 contains wishy-washy language like “subject to the availability of existing funds” and relying on “gifts, donations, and grants from public agencies and private persons.”

As of June 2, Gov. Linda Lingle had yet to take action on the measure.

Mizuno, the Democrat chairman of the human services committee, told the hearing audience, “We are certainly looking for solutions, and a legislative briefing can accomplish much. We hope to be very effective.” But he also made it clear that lawmakers are not looking to spend more money but instead to “work with the structure we have now.”

Mizuno and Cabanilla, the Democratic chairwoman of the housing committee, then called for testimony from government agencies, researchers and social-service providers.

“We seek to identify viable solutions and want you to share ideas,” said Cabanilla. “This is a very complicated matter, and we need you the stakeholders to come and let us know.”

What the House representatives — all three of them, out of 76 total legislators — heard was not necessarily news, but it was important nonetheless. Some highlights:

There are 10,000 people on a waiting list for public housing, and many have been waiting for years. Many occupants are able to pass their housing unit on to relatives through “residual rights” recognized by the federal government.

Welfare fraud in public housing is rampant — a government hotline for tips is frequently in use — but inspection services are understaffed and the process of evicting someone from housing can be difficult.

Between 25-30 percent of homeless people who have been in Hawaii for less than a year are from the mainland and Micronesia. While homeless immigrants strain services, Hawaii’s homeless population is still mostly from Hawaii.

In the case of Micronesians, they come because of family and friend connections and because of a historic relationship with the U.S. government. Hawaii receives about $10 million a year to support Micronesians covered under the Compact of Free Association, but health and other services actually cost the state about $100 million.

Mainlanders come seeking a life change, perhaps one brought on by a broken relationship or a desire to seek the “mystique” of Hawaii. Weather is a factor, too. “They have nothing to lose,” said Connie Mitchell, executive director of the nonprofit Institute for Human Services, a downtown facility that sleeps up to 350 a night and serves about 7,000 meals a week.

Programs that pay to “reunite” homeless people with their families — i.e., one-way tickets back to the mainland — can only succeed if the homeless people have families ready to welcome them back. “The goal should never be to release someone into homelessness,” said Kent Anderson, executive director of the nonprofit service provider Family Promise of Hawaii. “It should always be into housing.”

A higher percentage of homeless males are served through outreach programs, while a higher percentage of women and children seek shelters. And there are many people, mostly men, living in bushes and on beaches who will never agree to enter a shelter because of the rules they would have to follow.

More than two-thirds of adults in shelters were unemployed, while the remainder are either full-time or part-time employees. Nearly half had high school diplomas and about 25 percent have some college.

The testimony was grim. At one point, after listening to a service provider gently offer suggestions on how the government could do better, Mizuno turned defensive.

“We are not afraid, we know we can do something,” said Mizuno. “We are not unrealistic, we are here to face the heat. Something needs to be done.”

“We just want some equity because it seems some people are getting all the services,” said Cabanilla.

The service provider later told Civil Beat that she believes lawmakers like Mizuno and Cabanilla are sincere and doing what they can.

“They do care,” she said, “but they don’t always understand how complex this problem is.”

She went on to detail some of those complexities, with Hawaii’s high cost of living and lack of employment opportunities at the very top.

Back in the conference room, Mizuno, Cabanilla and Sagum said they would travel to Waianae this Friday to meet with service providers and get a first-hand look at a poor neighborhood that has been particularly hard hit by homelessness.

Cabanilla also liked an idea proposed by Mitchell that nonresidents who use IHS and other services should either pay an extra fee or offer to provide a service themselves such as performing a little work around a shelter. Though Mitchell said she’s had few takers, Cabanilla thought it was an admirable plan.

“There is no free lunch,” she said.