HONOLULU—Two days before the city planned to dismantle her sidewalk home, Kionina Kaneso had no idea where she and her daughter and grandchildren would sleep.
A full-time fast-food worker, Kaneso had bad experiences at shelters before and was hesitant to live in another, ending up instead in one of the nation’s largest homeless encampments for two years. Desperate, she decided to try to get into a shelter.
Kaneso, a daughter and granddaughter made the long walk to one from their camp in a neighborhood between downtown Honolulu’s high-rises, the swaying palm trees of a beachfront park and the glittering tourist mecca of Waikiki.
A shelter worker helped several people from the camp find a spot inside to live.
She wasn’t as lucky: There was no more space for families.
“Where can I go?” Kaneso asked.
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Homelessness in Hawaii has grown in recent years, leaving the state with 487 homeless per 100,000 people, the nation’s highest rate per capita, ahead of New York and Nevada, according to federal statistics.
Since 2010, the rise has come even as the national rate has fallen during the economic recovery. The increase, driven by years of rising costs in the island chain, low wages and limited land, thrust the image of people sleeping on beaches alongside the state’s famed one of a relaxing tropical paradise.
Officials have tried to solve the problem, which is centered on Oahu, the most populated island. They’ve offered homeless services, banned sitting and lying on Waikiki’s sidewalks and proposed using shipping containers as temporary housing.
Gov. David Ige’s declaration of a state of emergency on homelessness underscored the depth of the crisis:
- While there are shelters and programs to help the homeless, there are far fewer empty beds than are needed—about 550 on any given night in Oahu, where an estimated 4,900 of the 7,620 homeless people live, according to service providers.
- The state needs 27,000 affordable rental units by 2020, but lawmakers set aside enough money for 800 units this year. Maintaining the existing public housing could cost $800 million over the next decade, according to state estimates.
- Statewide, 10,000 people wait five years or more to get into state-run public housing, and the waiting list for Section 8 rent assistance in private housing was so long, they closed the list for about a decade.
- The state’s population of unsheltered families ballooned 46 percent from 2014 to 2015, said Scott Morishige, state coordinator on homelessness. He said changes in public housing policy and mental health services contributed to the rise.
A survey by service providers in August of Kaneso’s encampment found that 42 percent of the nearly 300 people were families.
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After being told there was no space for her family, Kaneso went through with the application anyway, hoping that a slot would open up. Her daughter, Kifency Kinney, 24, had to apply separately because she was an adult.
This didn’t make sense to Kaneso, who says children stay with their parents long past age 18 back home, the Pacific island state of Chuuk in Micronesia.
“What’s she gonna do? She doesn’t have a job,” Kaneso told the shelter worker.
On the way back to their tent, Kaneso and her daughter pushed shopping carts full of laundry they did while waiting at the shelter. Keioleen Helly, 3, pushed a stroller with the laundry detergent.
Soon, they ran into outreach workers who told them about how buses would take the camp’s residents to shelters.
Kaneso and her daughter then began packing baby oil, a football, chips and clothes into boxes and plastic bins, and called a friend with a truck to help them get their belongings to a storage unit.
She had one more day to figure out what to do with everything that didn’t fit into the truck, and where her family would go.
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Kaneso’s encampment, known as Kakaako, wasn’t the only one in Hawaii. Hundreds live in another on western Oahu that’s existed for more than a decade. A strip of waterfront tent sites with the best view is known as “the Hilton.”
Connie “Tita” Hokoana, who has lived in the encampment for seven years, sat on a lava rock as waves splashed over her body.
“This is a multi-million dollar view, and it’s free,” said Hokoana, who had set out a bunch of foraged wild kiawe beans to dry, planning to make tea or peanut butter bars to sell for extra cash.
“I choose to live like this,” she said.
Few, however, come to Hawaii imagining living in a makeshift tent. Kaneso arrived in 2004 and worked odd jobs as a dishwasher and assembly line worker to pay for her son’s flight to Hawaii so he could get medical treatment for a heart condition.
Kaneso is among the many Micronesians who moved to Hawaii in recent years as part of an agreement their nations have with the U.S. government that allows them to work and live in the country. They come for medical care, education and job opportunities.
