While we were wondering if the nation would elect a local guy as president and obsessing over rail, the issue of homelessness got pushed off the priority list of social concerns, at least as far as politics goes.

The problem certainly hasn't gone away. The horrifying story that came out of Kalihi about a Third-World-like pole-and-tarp structure housing 50 men, women and children should have shocked everyone into action.

But the question didn't come up too often for local political candidates, and when it did, they all gave the warm and fuzzy quote about compassion.

Compassion is an attitude, not an action plan. Granted, it is a good attitude, but compassion without action is the same as doing nothing.

Campaign season is not the time to bring up difficult, multilayered problems that few agree how to solve. Campaign season is for slogans, sign waving and happy promises. "We're going to roust all those blue tarps from the beach park" is not a happy promise, and it is not a promise that can be easily kept.

But clearly something must be done. The homeless encampments are spreading out to all parts of the island, the economy is in a tailspin and the recent story of a flimsy collection of poles and tarps in Kalihi that dozens of people were calling home underline how desperate daily life has become for too many.

To think that people were living in those conditions right here in Honolulu; actually paying rent to live under a plastic roof and share one stove and two toilets should be completely unacceptable to our community. This is Hawai'i, not some undiscovered, unreported outback. Too many people knew about that house of horrors and figured it wasn't their kuleana.

And things aren't likely to get any better soon. With the scary state of our national and local economy, more people are going to have a hard time paying the rent or the mortgage. Where are they going to go?

Mayoral candidate Panos Prevedouros conjured the image of the New York Police Department and studying that city's model of how to deal with homeless people.

Ann Kobayashi talked about a model where old hotel rooms are turned into transitional housing with support services.

Mufi Hannemann talked about working with the state government to provide programs for the homeless.

Maybe the folks living in cars or in tents, under bridges or balanced on PVC pipes and tarps over Kalihi Stream can find some shelter in the rail stations, because that seems to be the only action plan around.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.