Honolulu To Create New Housing For The Homeless
For the past six months, city workers have gone from camp to camp clearing the homeless from Honolulu’s parks and sidewalks. Oftentimes, the homeless have little choice but to find another park or pack into messy, crowded shelters.
Now, to give them a new way off the streets, Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle has announced a new transitional housing project geared specifically toward helping people with special needs.
鈥淗omeless person with special needs include persons with disabilities and chronic conditions such as mental illness, addiction to alcohol and physical disabilities who, because of these conditions have difficulties participating in traditional shelter programs,鈥 Carlisle told reporters on Tuesday in his office.
The city has set aside $3.5 million for the project, which would be operated by a nonprofit. Honolulu officials have asked nonprofits to submit proposals for acquiring or renovating an existing structure to house the project.
Keith Ishida, executive director of the city’s Office of Housing, said that the transitional home will have between 20 and 30 single units.
But where the new housing shelter will go is still up in the air.
When asked how to convince a neighborhood to welcome a homeless shelter, Ishida said, “People think that we have never done this before, but if you look on Beretania Street, the Safe Haven project, it was established (in) much the same manner where conversations were started with different communities, before the downtown community basically accepted the project. We’re taking the same approach.鈥
Safe Haven, a part of Mental Health Kokua, is a transitional home located in Chinatown that provides residential, medical and clinical services for up to 25 mentally ill homeless people.
The city estimates that there are about 275 chronically homeless people in Honolulu.
A chronically homeless person is as someone who has a disabling condition and has been continuously homeless for more than a year.
Ishida said that the new transitional home will be different from Safe Haven as it will offer services to homeless people who have special needs but are not necessarily mentally ill.
The city will accept proposals from nonprofits until May 30 and will select one to undertake the project in June.
