Hawai'i's first government-financed homeless complex to provide transitional housing and one-stop support for 150 people is planned at a site in Wai'anae, pending final approval, city officials said last week.
Federal money allocated by the city will pay for the $5.3 million project on state land near the Kau'iokalani public housing project, said Mayor Jeremy Harris, a strong proponent.
Approval by a committee of city officials could come this week. No council or other approval is needed.
Stanlyn Placencia, executive director of Wai'anae Community Outreach, said there will likely be a public hearing and she hopes residents will move into the first units in about 15 months.
The project, considered all but dead six months ago, got new life when a consortium of three nonprofit groups stepped forward to manage the project before last week's deadline. Homeless Solutions Inc., Wai'anae Community Outreach and the U.S. Veterans Initiative will share management, Harris said.
The consortium was the sole applicant for the project, which evolved from a Harris proposal last year. Homeless advocates criticized the original proposal for failing to provide long-term housing with support services and for failing to provide money to operate the facility.
Wai'anae residents worry the facility could draw more homeless to their community, which is already home to 1,000 people on the street on any given day.
But, Harris said, it is an important first step in providing care for O'ahu's 3,297 homeless.
The complex is "not just a homeless shelter, but an actual facility that will be able to do intake services and provide the necessary referral services for a whole variety of different problems and needs to get at the cause of the homelessness," he said. "If you don't deal with that, you're never going to solve the problem."
The complex will be for singles as well as couples and families, which is unique. Other private facilities focus on specific groups, usually women with children.
Anna Peroff, 36, who has been homeless for about two years, said the planned homeless facility in Wai'anae gives her hope for the future.
Peroff now lives in her car with her boyfriend along the Wai'anae coast.
Peroff, a former drug user, said it is hard to get the support services and job training she needs to improve her life while living on the streets.
"It would make a big difference to me," Peroff said. "Having a house would give me more self-esteem to move forward in my life. Now, being on the beach, inside of me, it's different."
She works at the Wai'anae Community Outreach Center and her boyfriend gets construction jobs when he can find them, but they have not earned enough to find a home they can afford.
"If we were in a home and stable, a lot of things would go different for us," she said.
The latest proposal would not have happened without state intervention.
"The state has stepped up to the plate and offered to provide the land," said Terry Brooks, executive director of Homeless Solutions, the lead applicant of the consortium. "That was make or break. Without that, nobody had property and it would have gone nowhere." The land is being provided at a cost of $1 annually.
The state also encouraged the nonprofit groups to put together their proposal to manage the facility, said Sandra Miyoshi, homeless program administrator for the Department of Human Services.
"I didn't want the money to disappear," she said. "How often do you have a commitment of funds to build something for the homeless? Very, very rare. Since this opportunity was there, the providers, everyone kind of scrambled to say what can we do to make this work."
The money was provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Miyoshi said the state's 3.3-acre property at Kau'iokalani was intended for public housing, but sat empty due to lack of money.
"Here we have improved land and no money to build," she said. "The city is offering this opportunity to build something, but the $5.3 million is not enough to purchase land. You put them together and we suddenly have something that can happen to create housing for the homeless."
Wai'anae has one of O'ahu's biggest homeless populations.
"There is a tremendous need out there," Brooks said. "There are so many people, families particularly, living on the beach or in a van. This is meant to address those needs because there is not much out there at this point."
Area residents know help is needed for the homeless, but are concerned that it's in their backyard.
Cynthia Rezentes, chairwoman of the Wai'anae Neighborhood Board, said putting a major new homeless facility along the coast could send more needy people searching for help their way.
"I think this is one of the fears a lot of people have," Rezentes said. "As far as accommodating the homeless people that are here today, I don't think you're going to find anybody opposed to that. The question is who all else is going to end up out here because of that."
Rezentes would like to see similar centers built in other areas.
"Nobody out here is going to say we won't handle our own. That is not the issue," she said. "But, you can't blame them for gravitating to where the services are."
The facility will have 55 units of transitional housing and a one-stop support services center. It will also have an additional 20 units of supportive housing for homeless veterans in former Navy barracks in Kalaeloa.
Money for staff and maintenance will come from rent for the units, which will be set at no more than 30 percent of tenants' adjusted income. People without income also will be considered for housing, according to the applicant's proposal.
The three groups that will co-manage the facility have experience in this area.
Homeless Solutions currently runs four family transitional complexes, two that were supported by the city. Neither of the city-supported facilities provide one-stop support services on-site, and they are not for all homeless people.
One of them, Vancouver House, opened in January 1999 and houses 30 families, mostly single women and their children.
"Except for Vancouver House, there hasn't been much new built by anybody to address the homeless issue for many years," Brooks said. "It is something whose time has come."
Harris said even though he leaves office at the end of the year, he would like to see the city continue to build similar projects where needed.
"The city gets $15 million to $20 million in (federal) funds every year," he said. "So we could easily set aside $5 million a year and build a new one every year in different parts of the island."
The Wai'anae project is a good start, but there is still a long way to go to solving homelessness in Hawai'i, Harris said.
"We can't just keep sheltering homeless," he said. "We've got to figure out what is causing the homelessness and deal with that so they are no longer homeless. They can be transitioned back into society and have jobs and are productive and gotten treatment for the mental illness or drug abuse or whatever it is. I think (this project) has great potential."