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Money is tight pretty much all the time. So after paying their rent, Puaʻena Vierra and her wife rack up credit card debt for groceries, medical expenses and other necessities.

They are among a quarter of households in �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� who spent more than their income in 2024. 

To make up the difference, people used savings and credit cards and cut expenses. They worked more hours or an extra job. They sold belongings. They borrowed money from family and friends, or banks or other lenders and overdrew their checking accounts.

That unhappy picture is just part of a larger grim reality depicted in a new report released this week that said four in 10 �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� residents are just getting by or struggling to make it. by Aloha United Way notes the problem is most acute on neighbor islands, particularly Maui.

The nonprofit’s report is part of an effort to track the needs and circumstances of people living in dire economic straits. That includes people below the poverty line, but also those above the poverty line who still endure financial hardship, a group referred to as ALICE: asset limited, income constrained, and employed.

Vierra of Pearl City is living the ALICE reality. Five years ago, she and her wife were already working two jobs each — she as a Hawaiian immersion school preschool teacher and a food delivery person, her wife as a grocery store clerk and a family support specialist with a nonprofit — when medical complications with her wife’s pregnancy and subsequently with their son plunged them into financial disarray.

The emergencies further tightened their finances. Life grew yet tougher.

Vierra took time off to care for her son. She went back to school to earn another degree to increase her earning potential. Being a student, she said, also made her son eligible for a school that could accommodate his medical needs. She started working as an in-home child caregiver. She and her wife moved in with her father, then got their own apartment, then moved in with her in-laws.

The family of three has been intermittently without health insurance, and Vierra often has to take unpaid time off and pay out of pocket for her son’s medical care. Their debt mounts.

“Honestly, my wife and I are just struggling to survive,” Vierra said. “We don’t ever, you know, get time for ourselves. It’s draining. It’s physically and mentally stressful.”

The federal poverty level is just under $36,000. What Aloha United Way’s ALICE Initiative refers to as the household survival budget — enough to cover basic necessities such as housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, taxes and smartphones — is more than that for a single adult and $107,795 for a family of four. 

The report focused on �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� residents such as Vierra who live below the ALICE annual income threshold. That’s about 560,000 people, or more than one in three residents.

“There’s no good news in any of the information, but the process and the importance of our understanding of this knowledge is so critical,” said Peter Ho, CEO of Bank of �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��, which funds the report and helps finance the ALICE initiative.

Even the report’s single bright spot — that the percentage of residents below the poverty line dropped from 14% in 2022, when the last ALICE report came out, to 12% last year — has a gloomy lining. 

Some of that decline may be attributed to government relief funding during the pandemic, families returning to work since the pandemic and a state minimum wage increase that will reach $18 an hour in 2028.

But “another reason the ALICE number could drop is that our ALICE families are simply leaving Hawaii,” said Suzanne Skjold, Aloha United Way’s chief operating officer.

Vierra and her wife have struggled with that very prospect.

“It has been on our minds the past several years, but my wife and I want to make everything work, make it possible to stay in �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��,” Vierra said. “I’m Native Hawaiian. My son is Native Hawaiian, and he goes to a Hawaiian immersion school. We wouldn’t have our connection to place and culture without being able to live here in �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��.”

Financial Pressures Drive People Away

Compared to 2022, the percentage of families living above the poverty line but below the ALICE household survival budget remained at 29%, the report said.

Among other key findings: nearly a third of �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� residents aged 18 to 34 are considered to be in ALICE status, as are a third of residents 65 and older; half of households with children are below the ALICE threshold; a striking 58% of Native Hawaiians and 52% of Filipino residents are below the threshold.

Women are also particularly at risk: nearly half of female residents live in ALICE families, compared to a third of men.

More than two in five households, or 41%, of people below the ALICE income threshold said they are worried about being forced to move from their current home within the next year.

That financial pressures push people out of �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� — and the high cost of that trend — was a theme Skjold and others returned to repeatedly at a press conference last week about the report.

“It’s very easy for the 60% of the community that is not ALICE or below to say that’s their problem,” Ho said. “The reality is it’s our problem. From a community and moral standpoint. But I will also tell you, from an economic standpoint, it is everyone’s problem.”

Speaking after the report was presented about the decline in people living below the poverty level, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said, “I do think it’s because people left.”

Skjold said the cost of living in general and housing prices specifically drive much of the financial insecurity plaguing residents living below the ALICE income threshold — and fuel the departure of �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� residents.

“There’s other reasons that are impacting families,” she said, “but these two are driving our outmigration for families who are considering leaving.”

The report said 37% of families surveyed said someone in the family is considering leaving the state, 73% said it was because of the cost of housing and 85% said it was due to the cost of living.

“People right now are considering leaving the state of Hawaii from our workforce, from our younger families, our Hawaiian families,” Skjold said. “That is something that we are deeply concerned about.”

Tackling Problems With Nonprofit Partners

To address the problems highlighted in the report, Aloha United Way and �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� Community Foundation — having committed about $11 million since 2019 — fund a growing group of nonprofits that provide services related to the various overlapping issues related to economic insecurity, from health to homelessness, from education to legal services.

Skjold said the data in the report, and from , has shaped what Aloha United Way asks of the 20 nonprofit partners it now funds. Beyond the services they offer, the nonprofits are assessed on how they work with other agencies, and how they are moving people toward economic health. They are also asked to partner with Aloha United Way in its advocacy work.

“Ten years ago, if you told nonprofits that they need to be working on collective impact or systemic change, they would have probably said no. Our point is to serve this person right in front of us,” Skjold said. “I think what we’ve seen as a sector is that we need to work with government and with business to work together collectively and find the root causes and solve that systemically.”

The economic factors driving the ALICE report’s findings played out in recent strikes by hotel workers and nurses over wages and working conditions, said Micah Kāne, president and CEO of �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� Community Foundation. In the latest of those, Queen’s Medical Center nurses have scheduled a two-day strike starting next Monday.

The state’s cost of living is forcing employers and employees into conflict, Kāne said.

“It’s unfair to think they can come to an amicable solution that’s fair for both sides,” he said after the event. “There isn’t a business model in our country that will sustain either the business model or the wages that either of them deserve, because the cost of living is so high.”

The report also found that neighbor island residents are more likely to fall below the ALICE income threshold. And on post-wildfire Maui, a majority of residents – 53% – are struggling to survive financially by ALICE criteria. 

The foundation of that economic distress was in place before the fires, said Kāne, whose organization launched the nearly $200 million immediately after the August wildfires to assist recovery efforts, in large part through interim housing projects.

He said that in 2018 in Maui County, nearly two-thirds of families were paying more than 30% of their income toward housing, defined by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development as being “cost burdened.”

“Maui was in front of the curve on all things bad,” Kāne said. “So the balance of the state should not have to look far to realize that unless we disrupt this system in a massive way, our future is very predictable, and we’ll continue to see the outmigration of the people we care the most about.”

He added, “We’ve got to settle this housing issue in a massive, massive way, and this report reaffirms that.”

The report said policies that would help ALICE households include paid family and sick leave benefits, debt reduction and emergency financial assistance programs, job training, and more investment in mental health resources for struggling residents.

Vierra recently joined the Ohana Leadership Council as a family advocate, for which she earns a quarterly $250 stipend. She has been contacting lawmakers to make the case for paid family and sick leave and will attend opening day of the Legislature’s 2025 session on Wednesday to press the argument that �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� residents need financial relief and breathing room.

“I’ve never done that before,” she said. “I feel really supported, very empowered to do these things because I’ve never really engaged politically as a Native Hawaiian.”