After reading about “homeless sweeps” occurring throughout Hawaii, I thought I’d try an experiment to evaluate the availability of emergency shelters in each County.
I went online, searched “homeless shelters” and “homeless services” in all four Counties, and started making phone calls. My goal was to help a fictional homeless couple searching for a safe place to sleep.
After over 20 phone calls, I could not find a single shelter on ANY island that could tell me they had a place for this couple to sleep.
My fictional homeless couple was invited to come down for an “intake interview,” after which they’d be put on a waiting list. I was also told, repeatedly, “There’s nothing available tonight,” and no promises for tomorrow or the next day.
If you’re a single male and don’t mind sleeping next to a bunch of other single males, there might be a place for you. First, however, you must come in for an evaluation. Only then will you know whether or not you’ll have a bed for the night.
80% of my telephone calls were answered by machines that required me to navigate through various responses and ultimately leave a message for a return call.
My first call to an organization purportedly offering statewide support for the homeless yielded this message: “The service you are calling is not available from this location. If this is an emergency, please dial 911.”
I searched online for the organization and found another number.
After navigating an unnecessarily complex AI menu – “Press 1, Press 2, Press 3, please complete the short survey,” I was eventually connected to a human, who gave me another number for a family emergency shelter.
No one answered there, and I was directed by an answering machine to leave a message. I then called the men’s shelter, thinking that if the couple had to split and stay in different shelters, that still might be acceptable.
The person answering at the men’s shelter told me the homeless man I was trying to help had to come down in person for an interview to determine whether there was space at the shelter for him or not.
I was trying my darnedest just to find a place for two people to sleep for the night, and was completely unable to do so. Unfortunately, the situation in every county was the same.
The 2024 Hawaii Homeless Point In Time census counted 6,389 people statewide experiencing homelessness. 62% or 3,961 of those individuals were unsheltered.
The entire inventory of emergency shelter beds on all islands combined is less than 2,500.
Imagine: You’re homeless, living in your car, at the beach, in the woods, on the road… and you’re the one making desperate phone calls (assuming you have a phone) and navigating a system that doesn’t have any beds available anyway.
Imagine the police coming through in the middle of the night, telling you to “move along.”
Where are you supposed to go?
There’s literally no legal place for you to sit, lie down or sleep.
There’s no affordable housing, no beds available at emergency shelters. There’s not even a legal place for you to park your car and sleep overnight, let alone a campground with bathrooms and perhaps a shower.
And yet you’re told to move along.
We can, and must do better.
The lack of adequate shelters and related services and staffing is an emergency.
We must dramatically expand funding, staffing, and facility support for the obviously overworked and under-resourced providers of homeless services.
They’re valuable members of our community, working in sometimes the darkest and most depressing of circumstances — and they deserve full-throated and tangible support from both State and County government.
Emergency homeless shelters and related services must be made a priority.
And we must stop the sweeps until that happens.
Note: In my research I could find no evidence that validates the persistent rumors that other states or municipalities are sending us their homeless and houseless people.
Also, while it’s true that some of the unsheltered do not like the “rules and structure” they must follow at the shelters – the fundamental fact of the matter is that our emergency shelters on every island are full and have waiting lists of people who do want to use the shelter as a safe place to sleep. We must expand the number of beds and rooms and we must increase support for staffing and related services.
GARY HOOSERis a former Hawaiʻi State Senator and Majority Leader.
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