Homeless advocates are encouraged by recent signs of progress in the effort to correct the specter of legions of people with no place to go who have taken refuge along miles of beaches on the Wai'anae Coast in the past two years.

A beach park that became the emblem of Hawai'i's homeless problem and the site of a tent city for two years is now deserted as families who occupied the park find housing in a new state-run transition shelter in Kalaeloa.

Featured in a series by The Advertiser and in other local and national news reports over the summer, a drive past Nanakuli Beach Park today shows an empty, serene plot of park land that until early this month had been the chaotic setting for dozens of tents and makeshift encampments that were home to more than seven dozen park dwellers.

Meanwhile, 600 cubic yards of concrete were poured yesterday next to the Wai'anae Neighborhood Community Center, marking the beginning of the state's $6.5 million temporary emergency transitional shelter that will house 300 homeless people. Set to open by the end of this year or in early 2007, this facility will evaluate myriad problems facing homeless individuals — be they financial, substance abuse or mental — and assign residents to programs and experts who can best help them correct their problems and acquire jobs.

In time, homeless individuals at the emergency shelter will move to a temporary transitional shelter, such as the one at Kalaeloa, where they will stay for up to two years until they have the know-how and ability to afford living quarters within the social mainstream.

These developments are viewed as early signs that things can turn around for the coast's beachside homeless population, and show movement in what has been considered an intractable problem. Encouraging as they are, they are seen as small steps.

The Wai'anae Coast still has the most visible homeless population in the state. Hundreds of tents are clustered over a 15-mile stretch from Tracks Beach Park to Ka'ena Point State Park. Some locations, such as Ma'ili Beach Park and Kea'au Beach Park, have become virtual tent cities.

Nevertheless, Nanakuli Beach Park returned to near pristine condition, and the state's emergency and transitional shelters represent the hope of how a homeless solution might work. While not everyone who lived in the Nanakuli camp now has more permanent shelter, most do.

"It's happening," said Bert Bustamante, the patriarch of one of the largest families that had camped at the park, and the man who became a spokesperson for the plight of homeless tent people along the coast. "The park is beautiful again. It's how it was supposed to be."

CHANGING LIVES

On Oct. 19, some 150 coastal beach dwellers, including the Bustamantes and other families from Nanakuli Beach Park, began moving into two floors of a three-story state transitional shelter known as Onelauena at Kalaeloa. Up to 70 more people are expected to join them later this month as the first floor of the converted military barracks is finished by month's end.

Kaulana Park, the state homeless solutions team coordinator, estimates that about two-thirds of the approximately 90 to 100 people who were once at the Nanakuli Beach Park now reside at the Onelauena transitional shelter.

Around 30 of those residents are children, he said. The remainder of homeless who lived on Nanakuli Beach have moved over to nearby Forac Beach Park, popularly known as Zablan Beach, he said. Otherwise, they have gone to other area beach parks to wait until they can move into a shelter.

"That's the whole idea," said Park, who added that the Kalaeloa transitional shelter will also serve as an emergency facility until the Wai'anae complex is up and running. "It's not just returning the parks to the public. We're changing the lives of people who used to live on the beach."

Park said emergency shelter residents, who pay nothing, will segue into transitional facility where they will pay a "program fee" of $300 to $500 a month, depending on the resident's circumstances. From there, they eventually will move into public housing, affordable rentals or affordable housing.

"It's a different approach," he said. "And we have to have that different approach, unlike what we've had in the past. We want to truly get these people from a no- job, no-house situation, into an affordable home situation with a job. They will learn how to use the tools to do that."

LINGLE TOURS SHELTER

Park joined Gov. Linda Lingle yesterday as she toured the emergency transitional shelter site in Wai'anae.

"This is not just any construction project," said Lingle as she inspected what will eventually become a section of the facility where families will live. "I was just talking to a fellow here who knows a friend of mine, and I said, 'You know, you're going to help an awful lot of families by your work here.' Every person here has a lot of pride in what this project represents — the human side of it. The impact of this will be huge on real people's lives. A lot of children will be helped by this."

At the Kalaeloa shelter, residents were expressing gratitude for finally have a roof over their heads.

"It's working good," said Monica Chan, a recently certified nurse who lives at the shelter with her husband, Douglas. "You're going to have personality clashes in any neighborhood, but we're working through all that."

Chan spoke out at a public forum in Wai'anae on Oct. 30, in part, she said, because she wanted to let "people understand that not everybody who's on the beach is a drug addict that doesn't want to get back on their feet."

Chan's friends Verna and Keoki Orpilla and their 12-year-old son, George, moved onto Nanakuli Beach after they lost their apartment for financial reasons.

"We had nowhere to go," said Verna, who said she looks forward to the day when her family will have a place of their own once more. "I think this is going to work. It's a good program. It got us off the beach."

CITY WORK AT PARK

The availability of the Kalaeloa shelter coincided with a move by the city to clear out Nanakuli Beach to build a canoe halau.

People who had lived at Nanakuli Beach were told to vacate the park by the first week of November, when the city and county would begin construction at the northwestern section of the park.

Some who didn't move into the Kalaeloa shelter were told they could move their belongings to another city camping area, such as the one at nearby Forac Beach Park. The city has pledged that beach dwellers won't be moved out unless there's somewhere else to pitch their tents until state emergency and transitional shelter accommodations can be provided.

City spokesman Bill Brennan said the move was done in cooperation with homeless service providers and people living in the park, who were notified that the halau project was coming.

"Most got the word and agreed to move — whether they went to Kalaeloa or some other section of beach," Brennan said. "We're compassionate and sympathetic to their plight and we're trying to work with the state in accomplishing basically two goals — the cleaning of the city parks, and the finding of suitable shelter for homeless folks.

"And the process is proceeding pretty much as everyone had hoped it would."