More funds needed
to serve homeless
The current draft of the state’s budget allocates a 5% increase for Homeless Programs Office contracted service providers. This includes organizations like ours, Hope Services Hawaii, which provides street outreach, psychiatric street medicine, shelter, permanent housing and more.
Our team and our community partners visit homeless encampments and work with people to address their myriad individual needs — medical, legal, financial, etc. — with the eventual goal of each person moving into permanent housing.
Any island resident can tell you the need for these services is increasing, and the data supports it. A rising cost of living means more people now enter homelessness than exit it. For every person housed in Hawaii County, two more become unhoused. In 2019 the Homeless Point in Time Count showed 690 people experiencing homelessness in our county, while in 2023 that number shot up to 1,003.
Rising prices also mean it’s more expensive to implement our programs. According to the Department of Human Services’ testimony on the budget bill, House Bill 1800, some programs, like homeless outreach and rapid rehousing, have not seen an increase in state funding since 2016. Funding for other programs, like emergency shelters and the housing placement program, has remained stagnant since 2010. How are we supposed to effectively deliver services in 2024 with 2010 funding?
Service providers have asked for a 20% increase to reflect the true cost of services, but we are being told to do more with less. 5% may be better than nothing, but it is not enough to deliver the homeless services our neighbors need and our communities deserve.
The details of the bill are currently being discussed by a conference committee, which is made up of members of both the House and Senate, and is closed to the public. Soon it will go before a floor vote. I urge you to call your state senator and representative and ask them if they supported a 20% increase in funding for homeless service providers. If they tell you no, ask them to explain why.
We need to make sure we have sufficient funding to keep up with our changing times, and for that, we need the kokua of our legislators.
Homelessness is a problem we can solve if we work together and adequately fund these essential programs that work. Our state legislators have the power to ensure no one in Hawaii has to sleep on the streets. Right now, the choice is theirs.
Brandee Menino
CEO, Hope Services Hawaii
Trump’s circus hurt court’s credibility
Every poll tells us the American people for a variety of reasons feel the country is headed in the wrong direction and have little or no trust in government.
Until recent years, the courts managed to retain a higher credibility. The spectacle of the Donald Trump legal circus that Americans have witnessed since 2020 is quickly doing away with any remaining credibility there might have been left.
Americans have watched as Trump’s money has delayed, appealed, ignored and promoted violence against judges, prosecutors and juries with no accountability nor judgement after years of court room theater.
The average American looks at the court system and listens to the establishment praise the “process,” yet they know “if that was me, I would be sitting behind bars right now, instead of running for political office and making money from the additional charges against me.”
The courts need to wake up and start representing citizens and our communities — not the rich, as they have been doing.
Bill Johnston
Kailua-Kona
