Posted on: Wednesday, November 27, 2002

EDITORIAL
Don't offer homeless free trips to Hawai'i

We've all heard the urban legend about social service agencies on the Mainland giving their neediest clients one-way airplane tickets to Hawai'i. As far as we know, no one ever nailed the myth down. Only now we're starting to wonder.

Islanders, including state Health Director Bruce Anderson, have been baffled by reports that a mentally disabled New York man is coming to Hawai'i, courtesy of the nonprofit Federation Employment Guidance Service, or FEGS.

Before we go any further, let us point out that any homeless person in the United States has the right to travel to the jurisdiction of his or her choice and apply for benefits. What makes this case troubling is: Who is paying the patient's way, and why?

Apparently an assistant at Honolulu's United Self-Help got a call from a New York caseworker at the FEGS mental health treatment center who told her that a patient was being discharged and sent to Honolulu on Dec. 2, and could someone at United Self-Help meet him and take him to the Institute of Human Services shelter.

If that request wasn't unusual enough, the caseworker then informed United Self-Help that FEGS was paying the airfare of the client, who lived briefly in Hawai'i, but has no money, support network or family in the Islands.

FEGS hasn't returned repeated calls for comment. Since we don't know the details, it would be premature for us to condemn the agency.

But that doesn't mean we're letting it go. We need to know if FEGS or other organizations consider it ethical to finance the travel of homeless people to Hawai'i. And if so, then how do they suggest our overburdened social services cope with this unorthodox form of philanthropy.

Sure, we're the Aloha State, and we'll probably do our best to take care of the New York patient, because that's the humane thing to do. But don't blame us for getting paranoid about becoming a dumping ground for America's poor, huddled masses because we're plenty overtaxed as it is.

And quite apart from financial concerns, there's the treatment aspect: How does FEGS expect a schizophrenic to thrive in a state where he knows no one (he last visited here in 1988), has no support network of any kind, and expects to live in the friendly confines of IHS for at least a month? It's too bizarre.