A year and a half after converting a Kaka'ako warehouse into what officials thought would be a temporary shelter, the state hopes to build a $20 million permanent facility in urban Honolulu that would offer round-the-clock services for homeless people.

The shelter is expected to at least double the emergency space available to homeless families in the urban core and commit the state to a project with a life span of at least a decade, or as long as there are homeless who need help, officials said.

It would also be the most expensive shelter the state has paid for to deal with a homeless crisis that is much more difficult than officials initially imagined. And that crisis isn't expected to get much easier soon, with a slowing economy, rising cost of living and continued lack of affordable housing.

The state has narrowed a list of 30 possible sites for the permanent shelter down to 10.

But the permanent shelter won't be ready for at least three years, officials said, and the current Kaka'ako site will have to be vacated as early as June to make way for the new state Office of Hawaiian Affairs headquarters. So officials are searching for a place to build a new temporary shelter.

Officials do not yet have an estimate for how much the interim shelter will cost. They declined to identify possible locations.

Kaulana Park, team leader of the state's Homeless Efforts Achieving Results Together group, said the Honolulu project is aimed at moving people into homes without taking them out of the area they are comfortable in.

Shipping homeless people from Honolulu to other parts of the island is counterproductive, he said. "We need to help the situation," Park said.

In the last two years, the state has spent more than $41 million from the general fund, special funds and grants on opening shelters to house some 1,500 people at any one time, figures show. Many of the shelters are in Leeward O'ahu.

Two will start accepting homeless this summer.

The state's Next Step shelter in Kaka'ako was the first state shelter and opened in May 2006.

And though the Forrest Avenue facility was designed to illustrate how the state could act quickly to meet a crisis, it has come to represent the complexity of the homeless problem — as many families at the shelter have searched for a year or more for affordable housing with no luck.

It also helped spur state officials to build shelters in other parts of O'ahu and on the Neighbor Islands to get people off beaches and out of parks.

It took about $540,000 to convert a warehouse into Next Step, where cardboard cubicles act as room dividers.

Of the 300 adults and children who entered the shelter in its first month, about 64 have been placed in homes.

Cheyenne Suka, 46, is one of about 222 people at the shelter who are still struggling to find permanent housing. The janitor at Ala Moana Center earns about $9 an hour — not enough to rent an apartment for him, his wife and their 5-month old son, Jerusalem. The family has been at Next Step since Day 1, Suka said, with a half-hearted smile. It is little Jerusalem's first home. And though it is far from ideal, Suka added, at least it is stable.

"We are thankful we have a roof over our heads," he said. "Still, it's challenging."

A NATIONWIDE PROBLEM

The state drive to end homelessness — which not only includes building shelters, but increasing homeless services and the affordable-housing inventory — comes as local governments across the nation are more actively trying to stem growing homeless populations, said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog and homeless-advocacy group.

Stoops said several dozen or more states and cities have built shelters, contributed significant money to ending homelessness or stepped up to create more affordable housing in the last year. The development, he added, is heartening for homeless advocates, who have largely been dependent on donations and federal grants in the past.

"If we're ever going to attack the root causes of homelessness, we need every level of government," he said.

But Stoops and several local advocates warned against building too many shelters, without concentrating on the bigger need — permanent, affordable housing. Stoops pointed out that a host of shelters were built in the 1980s across the country to handle what was expected to be a passing demand that turned out to be a long-term one.

For example, the Institute for Human Services built its first shelter in Iwilei in 1986. Its second, which now houses women and families, opened in 1997. The two are the only emergency shelters in urban Honolulu other than Next Step.

Connie Mitchell, executive director of IHS, said the proposed Honolulu shelter shows that the state is committed to long-term solutions — but also is aware that affordable housing won't spring up overnight.

"Permanent housing is going to take awhile," said Mitchell, whose agency got $750,000 in state money last year to increase the number it shelters.

"We need to provide some decent shelter for people now, but also allocate funds for affordable housing," she said.

Gov. Linda Lingle has included $20 million for the new Next Step shelter in her fiscal year 2009 budget request, which legislators will take up this session.

The request also includes an additional $227 million for affordable-housing initiatives — from $100 million to build homes for those on the Hawaiian Homelands waiting list to $25 million for the Rental Housing Trust Fund, which is designed to help finance affordable-rental developments.

State lawmakers said they would need to study the urban shelter proposal before offering their support.

And state Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland, chairwoman of the Committee on Human Services, wondered whether building a pricey shelter in Honolulu sends the wrong message. She said the state needs to be committed to ending homelessness, and so any homeless shelter should be designed as a stopgap and be turned into something else when homelessness is no longer at crisis levels.

NEED WILL BE LONG-TERM

It is unclear how long the shelter would be kept open, but officials anticipate it will remain for at least a decade.

Also, those who are planning the new shelter say it could be converted for other uses, including permanent housing.

The shelter is expected to hold from 150 to 200 people, in about 90 rooms equipped with bathrooms.

Most of the space will be dedicated to families.

There are about 63 families — including 53 children — now at Next Step, compared with about 20 families at IHS.

Next Step officials hope to pare down their numbers before going into their interim and then permanent facility.

For now, they have turned people to other programs, including IHS, instead of putting them on a waiting list.

Doran Porter, executive director of the Affordable Housing and Homeless Alliance, which manages operations at the Next Step shelter, said officials don't want to be left sending people back onto the streets if the interim shelter does not have enough space for everyone. Porter added he often gets calls from people who are homeless or about to be.

"It really is tough in this environment, with the rising costs of living," he said.

Next Step opened in Kaka'ako in the wake of the city's decision to close Ala Moana Beach Park at night, forcing about 200 homeless people to move elsewhere. When the shelter started up, officials expected it to stick around for about eight months, estimating that would be enough time to place those at the shelter in homes or transitional shelters.

Park said members of the state homeless committee he leads plan to narrow the list of 10 potential sites for the new and interim urban shelters this month, and could come to a decision in February. Surveyors are analyzing the potential costs associated with each site, along with proximity to bus lines, potential workplaces and programs.

He said the interim and permanent shelters would likely be in different places.

Some of the possible sites are privately owned, and some are owned by the state or other government agencies, he said. About half have existing buildings that could be converted into shelters, and the others are vacant or would require new construction.

The Hawai'i Community Development Authority owns the land where the Kaka'ako shelter is, and has given Next Step a lease through June.

Stanton Enomoto, OHA special assistant to the administrator, said the agency will likely start preliminary work at the site, including tearing down the warehouse, by late summer.

Reach Mary Vorsino at mvorsino@honoluluadvertiser.com.