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I am a homeless person living at Ka Hale a Ke Ola transitional housing shelter on Maui. On Sunday, I will be evicted to live as an unsheltered homeless person on the street because my two year transitional housing time is over. 

Despite the thousands of dollars I’ve paid KHAKO and the millions they receive from government and private funds, the best KHAKO can do after two years is “transition” me back to being unsheltered on the street, where I will not survive. KHAKO might say it’s my fault. I find it’s always the poor’s fault for having nothing.

All this talk about getting people off the street and into shelters to help them is shibai (or bullshit, for non Hawaiian speakers). The “supportive services” I’ve received have been a total failure in helping me with my financial, housing and health problems. I’m not any better off than I was two years ago. 

KHAKO’s solution is to use the police to force me back to being unsheltered on the street if they can no longer make money off me, even though they know that would be dangerous to my health. This is just the tip of the problem. 

I live in a one room slum at Ka Hale A Ke Ola homeless “resource” center, or which I pay $250 a month and contribute chore work. I’m forced to share my room with a homeless street person from Seattle who likes being homeless here on Maui better.  

My severe, expensive, medical conditions, some of which are directly caused by homelessness, are being paid for by taxpayers. Yet, the County of Maui a $4 million dollar loan to KHAKO that “disappeared” over the years. 

I’m 64, have never been arrested or had a drug problem, have two degrees from the University of Hawaii, have paid lots of state taxes, and built and sold businesses that still provide jobs on Maui. I was born and raised in Hawaii and have lived on Maui most of my life. I am local to the max. Google my name and Maui.

I had a real good run until I became homeless two years ago and started living life at the bottom of the barrel. First the 2008 meltdown wiped out my business, then the 2013 government shutdown put me on the street. I’m one of the millions who are the collateral damage of failed government and economic systems. This debate is no longer academic to me.  If you want to know the truth about homelessness from the perspective of an actual homeless person please go to my noshamehawaii.org website.

Sadly, homelessness has become a business where millions are spent in government and private funds that have not addressed the real problems. In fact, Hawaii will be flooded with homeless this year. Local folks are being pushed out of their homes by the wealthy and forced into slum shelters or container concentration camps with the poor refugees from outside Hawaii. 

Sadly, homelessness has become a business where millions are spent in government and private funds that have not addressed the real problems.

Hawaii is an extremely isolated group of islands that cannot sustain the amount of folks, rich and poor, who have the illusion of escaping here from a world going to hell in a hand basket. This is a reality we are going to have to accept and deal with. We have to take care the local people first.

There are people making good money “taking care” of the homeless. Millions are being spent to not solve the homeless problem because there is money to be made off it. The news media gets its spun information on the homeless from the government and NGO providers who have their own money-driven agendas. They call it “funding.” It provides money for housing, cars and vacations for homeless aid providers while the poor they are paid to help suffer in squalor.

Homeless and poor are a safe target for everyone because they have no voice and can’t fight back. They don’t make campaign contributions and rarely vote. There is little reason to solve the homeless problem with so many people making a good living off it.

According to Civil Beat, more than 500 unsheltered homeless people die each year in Hawaii. Their deaths go unnoticed. I believe this is because of mismanagement, incompetence and fraud by the people paid to help the poorest of the poor.  

DHS, HUD, Maui DHHC, the homeless industry and legislators have all failed me and many others. They will keep coming up with new “studies,” plans and programs to make you think they are doing their job, and the media will go along.

Sheltered and unsheltered homeless live a brutal Third World life, whether you believe it or not. We are the collateral damage of the bad choices made by our government and economic system over a long period of time. I could suffer a slow, “unattended death” on the street to make room for other paying clients at KHAKO.  If this is OK with the KHAKO board of directors, please proceed. Hopefully, My death will not go unnoticed.