Volcanic Ash

I made a few trips to Waikiki last week and found the homeless far less visible than my last visit in checks from the Elks Club end of Kapiolani Park through Ala Moana Park.

I’ve also noticed fewer homeless in once-popular areas in Kakaako.

I’ll take it as a sign that Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s homelessness initiative is making progress, although there’s cause for some wariness from reports that the Waikiki homeless are moving into abandoned properties.

The administration reported getting more than 400 people statewide off of the streets and into shelters or transitional and permanent housing in the initial 90 days of its initiative, which is a significant start in so short a time.

There’s been some suspicion that it’s mainly an attempt to clean up Waikiki and the city core for the APEC conference, but the governor and his homelessness coordinator Marc Alexander have earned credit for more commitment than that just from their willingness to set goals and accept accountability for the results.

They’ve developed some sound strategies, such as fixing public housing units that are vacant because of disrepair, identifying sub-groups of homeless and their special needs and getting public and private agencies that work with the homeless on the same page and directed toward best practices.

It’s encouraging that the liberal administration is willing to adopt tough love approaches when appropriate, such as discouraging charitable groups from feeding the homeless on the beaches and instead directing them to shelters where they can get more help than just food.

One of the first and most valuable management lessons I learned is that you never let anybody get comfortable in a bad situation that’s detrimental to both the individual and the larger community.

It’s fair to ask what society is doing to help our fellow citizens who are homeless, but it’s also fair to ask what the homeless who are capable of helping themselves are doing about it.

Those who shun available shelter space and claim the right to freely live on prime beachfront park lands and other public property because they don’t like the rules the rest of us have to follow deserve little slack.

Returning to our lively discussion on homelessness from the other day, I thought the dedication of the Weinberg Foundation project in Waianae with 30 long-term townhouses and 20 transitional studios for low-income residents pointed up the challenge.

This is a good project. Lack of affordable housing is the root problem for most of Hawai‘i’s homeless, and building more housing that fits their needs is the single most important thing we can do.

But then Gov. Neil Abercrombie started talking, and his typical bombast threw up a lot of smoke without getting us any closer to a solution.

“Everything is going to change,” he declared. “We are going to end homelessness in the state. It’s a crime against humanity — this is Hawaii, this is paradise, there will be no homelessness in Hawaii.”

Calling it a crime suggests there are criminals at work, and I wonder who he thinks they might be.

Nobody set out with an intent to render thousands of people homeless; it just happened as a result of a sinking island economy that produces high housing prices and relatively low-paying jobs, and nobody came up with an effective way to stem the tide.

If the governor is pointing fingers, he’s been in high public office for more than 35 years and hasn’t exactly been at the forefront of finding solutions to homelessness.

The second part of his statement is another Abercrombie trademark — repeatedly making sweeping promises before doing anything to show progress, giving him a growing reputation of being all talk and no action.

All he’s done so far is announce a 90-day plan that hasn’t been particularly well received and seems more about getting the homeless out of the way for APEC than enacting long-term solutions.

Ending homelessness is a noble goal and it’ll be a major feather in Abercrombie’s cap if he pulls it off, but it’s easier said than done.

The Lingle administration sincerely thought that homelessness could be ended in 10 years and put serious effort into building shelters and transitional housing, but left office without making much of a dent in a stubborn problem.

Abercrombie’s own homelessness coordinator Marc Alexander admits that the path to a broad solution is not yet clear.

With that in mind, Abercrombie would well advised to tone down the sweeping indictments and inflated promises until he has some actual progress to report.