Posted on: Saturday, November 23, 2002
State launches plan to track, serve homeless
By James Gonser
Advertiser Urban Honolulu Writer
The state has not yet completed its plan to end chronic homelessness, but the urgent need for a solution is prompting officials to launch parts of the ground-breaking effort immediately.
A Homeless Management Information System is being created to track and analyze homeless people and services, a step that ultimately will allow agencies to begin sharing information and eliminate duplication of effort, as well as coordinate the different services that clients need.
A one-year demonstration project will begin tracking 50 of the chronic homeless through various agencies, assessing their needs and attempting to provide housing for 60 percent of them within four months.
Lynn Maunakea, executive director of the Institute for Human Services, said the project would be used as a benchmark. "This will demonstrate to the Legislature and the community that this plan is going to work," Maunakea said.
Those details emerged yesterday at a forum at the State Capitol that culminated a week of activities intended to spotlight homelessness. About 50 people representing federal and state agencies, church groups and private-sector providers discussed implementation of a plan developed by the State Homeless Policy Academy.
The plan originally was to be released yesterday, but was delayed to gather more comments from service providers on the Neighbor Islands.
"We are looking at specific ways to deal with homelessness," said Mike Flores of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. "The purpose is to bring together agencies, share information and work collaboratively to address the challenges of homelessness."
According to state figures, Hawai'i had about 13,000 homeless in fiscal year 2001, about 7,000 of them on O'ahu.
The State Homeless Policy Academy was formed in April along with similar groups in seven other states to improve access to mainstream services for the chronically homeless, including people with serious mental health and substance abuse problems.
The academies are operating under a mandate from the Bush administration to end chronic homelessness with help from the federal departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs.
The project is the result of a report by Dennis Culhane of the University of Pennsylvania studying thousands of homeless people in New York City and Philadelphia. Culhane discovered that 10 percent of the homeless are chronically homeless, and use about half of all resources targeted for the homeless.
These heavy service users could be served more appropriately and cost-effectively in permanent, mainstream housing accompanied by support services, Culhane concluded.
Federal grants are being offered to academy states, with preference for projects that collaborate to provide the chronically homeless with access to mainstream services.
At yesterday's forum, participants reviewed the academy's strategic plan in four parts: planning and coordination, targeted services, housing and the demonstration project.
The academy faces several obstacles in implementing its agenda, including tracking and analyzing homeless services, getting service providers and hospitals to share confidential information among agencies and paying for affordable housing.
Sandy Miyoshi, homeless programs administrator for the state Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawai'i, said the key to the plan's success is to have everyone work together.
"There are so many initiatives out there. I really see that as an academy we need to start gaining a consensus among those groups," Miyoshi said. "I think we are all wanting the same things; it is the strategic plan to pursue those things that we need to come together on."
Miyoshi said the academy's plan would be made final after incorporating comments, support and ideas from the forum and Neighbor Island caregivers.
Reach James Gonser at jgonser@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2431.
