Homeless find help at Leeward outreach center
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Leeward O'ahu Writer
Six months after plans for Camp Hope — a grassroots "tent city" for homeless people — were unveiled and widely criticized at a public meeting in Wai'anae, the project has not materialized.
But while Camp Hope isn't there, what amounts to a working model has developed as the area's homeless population keeps growing.
Since it moved from Wai'anae to a larger facility in Ma'ili in February, the Wai'anae Community Outreach Center has expanded its services and operates much the same way organizers had planned for Camp Hope — with just about everything except the tents.
At the center's retreat in the Oceanfront Commercial Center on Farrington Highway, homeless volunteers work to earn village bucks that can be used to purchase needed items at Aunty Tiny's thrift shop. Village bucks will be good for hot meals at the soon-to-be-completed Aunty Lei's Kitchen. A laundry, barber shop and shower area are also in the works.
Every Friday evening, clients are treated to a movie at the facility, where village bucks can buy snacks.
Clients are required to meet with case workers who evaluate their situation and devise a strategy. The center offers classes, financial aid, budgeting help, referrals and a place to get mail and use a phone. No one on drugs or who is intoxicated is allowed.
The idea is to help the homeless become self-sufficient, said executive director Stanlyn Placencia.
The center is not a place for handouts. "You have to go through some process before you can be helped," said Peggy Savella, 58, as she, her daughter Shirley Susa, and her hanai niece, Loke Williams, cleaned up the room where the barber shop will be. The three have been homeless for about a year
"This place has given me hope, where before I had lost it," said Susa, 34. Now, Susa believes she is beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. "In two weeks, I go to work at Taco Bell," she said.
The nonprofit Wai'anae Community Outreach Center has provided necessities for Wai'anae's homeless and at-risk since 1988. In that time, it has seen a homeless explosion in one of Hawai'i's poorest areas.
"We know there are more homeless," said Placencia, as she lifted an 8-pound stack of intake applications from atop her desk. "And these are just for the month of January."
Many of the forms she held were for entire families. The first application in the stack detailed a homeless couple with five children.
Although she can't say how much the area's homeless population has increased this year, the numbers had reached alarming levels at the time a local grassroots coalition, CAR — Community Area of Responsibility — announced plans for Camp Hope last October.
About 20 percent of O'ahu's 6,500 homeless live on the Wai'anae Coast, surveys indicated. More than 300 of those were younger than 16.
Believing something had to be done, a coalition of residents, service providers and homeless people working in partnership with city representatives, area legislators and police formed CAR. After months of hashing out options, the coalition proposed a "temporary homeless transitional living center" for 35 families. The plan called for using a five-acre parcel owned by the city next to Wai'anae Boat Harbor.
Camp Hope would be a closely supervised, 100 percent clean and sober facility where residents would be screened in advance, organizers said. The chronically homeless and those with drug and alcohol problems would be barred.
The goal was for agency professionals and volunteers to quickly move those who could be helped back into society's mainstream.
The idea was met with immediate criticism from the community, including many of the 200 who attended a public meeting in October.
Camp Hope would become a "dumping ground" that would transform Wai'anae into the "homeless capital of Hawai'i" and become a haven for crime and drugs, they said. It would be a danger to students attending nearby schools, opponents said.
Harbor master William Aila said he had reservations about Camp Hope and that he was unsure the rules could be enforced, but chided critics for offering no alternative.
And for those who fear the homeless would invade the camp site, Aila noted they were already there.
Advocates said they aren't surprised the Camp Hope idea hasn't advanced because Mayor Jeremy Harris is in his last months of office.
Placencia, who is on the CAR board, said the board is pinning its hopes on the next mayor. "I believe that Camp Hope will eventually become a reality," Placencia said.
Until then, the Wai'anae Community Outreach Center provides a model. As Savella put it, "If it works here, it will work at Camp Hope."
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.
