Peripheral People --
Hawaii's Homeless
by Travis Quezon, Honolulu
Weekly

We check
in with Honolulu’s homeless, and find that life on the streets is the same as
it’s always been: desperate, lonely and dangerous

You may have seen
him sitting there among the nighttime bustle of tourists and prostitutes smiling
to the orchestrated melody of Waikiki traffic. He’s Alvin, an 84-year-old Native
Hawaiian man who sits near a bus stop in Waikiki at night because he doesn’t
have a house to go home to. He sleeps there sitting upright—if he doesn’t, the
police will ask him to move. (Alvin, as well as the other homeless individuals
quoted in this story, asked to be referenced by their first names only.)

One night, two
drunken club goers urinated on Alvin while he was asleep. And two months ago, he
had his briefcase and cane stolen from him. The briefcase was where he kept all
of his medical documents and identification. Alvin walks with a cane because he
has crippling arthritis and is living with disabilities after suffering from a
stroke 30 years ago.

“Sometimes things happen, sometimes not,” Alvin says
of nights in Waikiki. “I know I don’t want to live on the street. Living on the
street, anything can happen.” He says he chooses to sleep in busy Waikiki
because it is safer to be in public view rather than tucked away somewhere where
there’s less action.

Alvin is one of Waikiki’s original beach boys, and
still manages to swim from Waikiki beach to Ala Moana Beach Park three days a
week. He uses his bus pass to get to his check ups at the clinic and to do his
laundry—all his clothes and belongings fit into a single rolling suitcase.

For two years he’s
spent his nights on a corner near Kalakaua Avenue with pimps, prostitutes, bar
hoppers and tourists. He’s often approached to talk story by a number of
different people who make it a point to stop by on their way home from work.

“It’s good to have
friends,” Alvin says. He recalls meeting people from as far as Canada and New
Zealand.

He’s
been helping to support a homeless mother and child that he met while living on
the street with food and money from the limited resources that he has—$350 a
month in Social Security that he saves for making a future housing deposit and
for rent.

Last
month, Alvin was assisted by a man named Brother Christopher, a Franciscan monk,
part of the Third Order of Assisi, who takes time from his life of solitude to
help homeless people find their way through the red tape of Hawai‘i’s homeless
assistance programs one person at a time.

Brother Christopher accompanied Alvin on a meeting
to set up his transitional housing through Homeless Solutions, Inc., making sure
he got his paperwork, medical check up, psychological verification, assets
verification and Social Security letter from 2007. Alvin has since successfully
moved into transitional housing in Kapolei.

Brother Christopher says that communication between
homeless people and their service providers is a real problem—that outreach
workers, housing specialists, shelter professionals and nurses in the process of
speaking with their clients can easily mishear or misinterpret information given
by the person seeking assistance. He says that listening carefully and observing
closely is key to helping a person in need in order to avoid unnecessary
setbacks.

For
homeless people who often have no easy access to phones or e-mail, obtaining
correct and accurate information is critical. Brother Christopher acts as an
advocate for the people he helps and maintains steady ongoing contact to provide
spiritual, emotional and practical individual support.

Living aloha

For people making
the daily commute to work in downtown Honolulu, the reality of Hawai‘i’s
homeless problem is often a ghostly blur on the skirts of our peripheral
vision—a glance away from reminding ourselves just how lucky we are to have a
bed to sleep on, a stove to cook our meals and a refrigerator to store our
leftovers.

For
Hawai‘i’s homeless, the streets, parks and beaches have become home—a reality
for many that was also once a passing glance away. What’s hidden from Hawai‘i’s
housed is as close as an extended gesture, a simple choice to acknowledge or a
reality that’s one unfortunate circumstance away from becoming our own.

The state
Legislature estimates that there are more than 6,000 homeless people on any
given day—more than 800 of them are children—and that 37 percent are of Hawaiian
or part-Hawaiian ancestry.

Curtis Kropar lives in apartment across from where
Alvin sat and chased away the drunks who were urinating on him that night.

“It irritates the
shit out of me that there are so many people who are so prejudice,” Kropar says.
He says that far too often people don’t think of houseless people as human
beings and believe in the stereotypes of the old drunk or the crazy old lady on
the corner.

One
visit to the close-knit community at the Next Step emergency shelter and you’ll
find that homelessness does not discriminate. The shelter has a capacity for 256
people. On a night that was not at the shelter’s peak, there were 98 children
checked in; 35 of them still wearing diapers. Kropar volunteers his computer
services at Next Step and other shelters around the island.

“When you say the
word ‘homeless,’ all these things come to people’s minds,” Kropar says. He
points to a little girl sweeping around her family’s sleeping area and a woman
carrying a baby. “Which one of those homeless people do you think should go out
and get a job or go into rehab?”

Solving the housing problem isn’t as simple as
getting a job. A common misconception people have is that they expect the
homeless to go from sleeping in an emergency shelter to living in a house in a
matter of weeks, Kropar says. The role of an emergency shelter is
stabilization— it is available for people
without anywhere else to go to spend the night, but they have to leave in the
morning. He says that many of the people who stay at Next Step have jobs doing
everything from construction to hotel work to owning their own business and that
going from an emergency shelter to a transitional shelter and finally to living
in a house is a multi-step process.

“Working check-out at Zippy’s isn’t going to pay for
housing for a family of four,” Kropar says. “In Hawai‘i, people are homeless
simply because they’ve run out of money. That’s the bottom line.”

Nearly one third of
adults who stay in shelters are employed, with 11 percent working part time and
19 percent working full time, according to the 2007 Homeless Service Utilization
Report by the Center on the Family at the University of Hawai‘i and the Hawai‘i
Public Housing Authority. The report also found that 48 percent of adults who
used federally funded services had a high school diploma or GED, while 30
percent completed a college degree.

Close to home

Kropar’s connection to houseless people is one that
hits close to home. He spent time living on the streets in Pittsburgh after
finding out he was evicted from his home when his mortgage company went bankrupt
and owed the IRS money in back taxes. He was homeless and working as a business
owner for five years before accepting a job as a computer programmer and then
moving to Hawai‘i.

Kropar put together a community computer lab at the
Next Step emergency shelter in Kaka‘ako when he realized how inaccessible
business employers were to homeless people because of the growing trend of
online-only applications. And in many cases homeless people lacked the basic
Internet and e-mail knowledge to follow through on their job or home search.
“This is like an instant screening process,” he says. “WalMart, Home Depot, the
hotels. Their only method is online applications.”

Apathy toward and
ignorance about the lives of homeless people are things that contribute to the
problem, according to Kropar. “There are problems here that can be addressed if
people would just give a damn and do something,” he says.

Kropar brings up the
example of an area at Next Step called “Celia’s Corner”—a decorated children’s
leisure area where the shelter projects movies and where volunteers from the
University of Hawai‘i’s medical school set up each week to offer free health
care. It was created when a 9-year-old girl, the corner’s namesake, made the
decision to help after seeing Next Step on a television news spot. She sold arts
and crafts at her school and raised $978 that was used for the materials to
construct the area.

“I’ve lost count of the number of adults who have
complained about the homeless and not done anything,” Kropar says. “You’re part
of the solution or you’re part of the problem. Be part of the solution.”

This month, Kropar
helped to organize the Walk the Talk fundraiser to raise money for a project
that would convert busses donated by Roberts Hawai‘i into mobile shelters. “We
want to provide a safe environment where people can get off the street or the
beach and sleep safely.”

While there are continuing efforts to offer
stability and help to those already on the street, there’s a lot more that’s
needed to prevent people from becoming houseless in the first place. “Safety is
becoming a problem,” Kropar says. “Very few things are there that provide the
safety net for when it’s, ‘oh shit, what do I do now?’ There’s nothing to
prevent you from becoming homeless.”

Hawai‘i laws are also unfairly written to target
homeless people, Kropar says of Act 212, which makes it a petty misdemeanor for
a person who “camps” somewhere where there is a posted notice to leave. He says
that the system’s continual failure to address the needs of homeless people have
left many feeling distrustful of the transitional services.

In who do we
trust?

Reed, a
decorated veteran 15 years out of service, holds a masters degree in psychology.
He became homeless after leaving the military and divorcing his wife. He sleeps
in the doorway of a building on Hotel Street in downtown Honolulu. He has cancer
and had triple bypass surgery to treat his heart condition. He also had his
suitcase stolen from him while sleeping on the street and says he’s given up
hope in ever receiving help.

The Homeless Service Utilization Report says that
military veterans accounted for 15 percent of those who received federally
funded shelter services in Hawai‘i.

“I’m stuck out on the street,” Reed says. “I keep
trying every available facility and everyone keeps promising help and no one’s
getting back to me. I can’t get in anywhere, it’s just terrible.”

Reed says he applied
for housing services and veteran services but has never heard back from the
organizations.

“I
helped homeless people all the time, and now I’m stuck out here and no one’s
helped a damn,” Reed says. “My wife talked me into getting out of the military.
That was my worst decision, I should have stayed in.”

Reed says he has a
friend who is also homeless that he can trust. They take turns at night keeping
watch while the other sleeps. He says he used to sleep in parks until it became
illegal to be in parks after 10pm.

Mark is a 60-year-old homeless Vietnam veteran who
passes through Fort Street Mall occasionally. He had all his belongings stolen
while asleep on the street.

“It’s really not safe at night,” Mark says. “You can
get robbed or beat up. I try to sleep in groups with other people to stay
safe.”

However,
the real problem isn’t that it isn’t safe enough living on the streets, it’s
that he has to live on the street in the first place, he explains.

“If someone’s eyeing
out something you have, they’ll get it eventually,” Mark says.

A spokesman for the
Honolulu Police Department says that the police are unable to reference the
number of crimes against homeless people because they do not keep track of
people’s place of residence when responding to calls.

“It’s hard because
you’re very vulnerable out on the street,” says Darlene Hein, program director
at the Waikiki Health Center. Hein says that there are increased health risks
for homeless people who are more susceptible to infectious disease and who don’t
have access to medication or healthy foods.

Extraordinary people living aloha

Because of the
risks, there’s a sense of trust on the street that brings homeless people
together. It’s a community like any other that’s faced with the difficult truth
of getting through the day and watching out for each other at night.

Kalani, who sleeps
on Hotel Street, says that his faith in God keeps him strong and able to move
on. He attends Bible study at Fort Street Mall every day and likes to quote
scripture. At night he watches out for his friends, also homeless and sleeping
on Hotel Street.

“Everybody loves everybody,” Kalani says. “We take
care of ourselves and watch each others’ backs.”

Kalani says he
became homeless when his ex-girlfriend stole his rent money. He has been saving
money from his social security but hasn’t been able to finalize a place to live.
He sleeps on a cardboard box.

A woman who gave her name as “R,” also sleeps on
Hotel Street near Kalani. She made the decision to be homeless so that she could
watch over her homeless father. She says that the homeless community can be
described in one word: extraordinary.

“They don’t feel sorry for themselves,” she says.
“It’s about living life and getting shut down. Cost of living is so high. But on
the street there is no racism. Every individual on the street is their own
person and they’re good people. I learned plenty.”

Teddy, a homeless
man of Native Hawaiian descent, who shares the portion of Hotel Street with
Kalani and R, says that Hawai‘i’s mayors and governors have failed to address
the needs of the homeless for 30 years.

“Where is the justice?” Teddy says. “They knew what
was the problem, but they never solve the damn thing. Where do we stand in the
2000s after all this mess they created? The street you sitting on, that’s all we
got. Now look at us today—how we survive. Now we’re just trying to find a nice
place to rest our head.