Gov of Hawaii says effort to clear out homeless before Obama visit is "happy coincidence"

Gov. Neil Abercrombie Launches 90-Day Plan To Clear Out Hawaii Homeless \

In Hawaii, a state that has long struggled to deal with its homeless population, the government has announced a new initiative to clear the streets and beaches of people living outdoors.

At a press conference in Honolulu on May 17, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports Governor Neil Abercrombie revealed his 90-day plan to focus on moving homeless into shelters.

The Associated Press notes the timing of the plan will leave the streets more presentable when the president visits the state.

The new initiatives are kicking in just before President Barack Obama hosts a major international conference -- the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum -- in Waikiki in November. Abercrombie said the timing wasn't deliberate, but instead a "happy coincidence."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/hawaii-homeless_n_863666.html

I usually walk along the bike path that is near the Pepsi center, site of the 2008 DNC.

There are usually tons of homeless people there.

During the convention? Not so much.

where capital descends on a community.

It isn't as important as Madison, is it?

So what if people die. No big deal.

What is wrong with getting homeless people into shelters? The bad thing is that it only happens when a municipality is trying to improve their image, not because there is always a need.

how anyone could miss it.

Let me ask you this, do you want you or anyone in your life having a shelter as PERMANENT HOUSING?

This is what it has become, since the rest of you don't have an interest in working for low-income housing. Just waste money on more and more shelters. And it IS a waste. Since you haven't read the info we have posted so many times, look it up yourself just how expensive it is for a municipality to keep people homeless. Is that how you want your money spent?

Then, there is the issue of disease. Are you aware there is a government directive, suggesting to people who have been in a shelter for a month to be tested for TB? Are you aware that a lot of the TB is treatment resistant? Do you have any idea what THAT costs a municipality, disregarding the suffering of the person involved, since that doesn't seem to matter?

And that is just ONE example of the illness that is spread in shelters. Remember, even if it doesn't matter if homeless people are sick... they can't be in a shelter during the day, so they ae out ...... INFECTING OTHERS.

My thinking when I posted was in narrow, short range terms. Please accept my apology. (although I don't know that public protests would do a great deal of good either)

Permanent low income housing is the long term goal. Thanks for keeping me focused.

:pals:

We have been doing the short-range emergency thing for 30 years now. People are stuck in a rut in their thinking.

It is causing much harm, but there isn't enough "progressive" discussion to actually move people out of their rutful (:)) thinking.

Its why I get so frustrated. To move to good solutions,, we need to know the problem. To know the problem, we need to have the attention of the progressive media. To have the attention of the progressive media, it needs to be on the corporate news. To be on the corporate news, there needs to be something new happening. For something new to happen, there needs to be good solutions.

AAARRGGGGHHH!!!!!

where is the pulling out hair emoticon??

Thanks.. your reply means a lot, and I hope you can understand my deep frustration. There is no way, without all of YOU, that I can figure out how to break that insidious endless loop!

H E L P..... :(

I know Bobbie is already aware of this statistic, but others might not be:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/186-million-empty-houses.php

There are a few places where people are squatting as protests, but they are ones who are OK with being arrested. That just can't be expected of homeless people, AND, if that is the goal, then it should be NON-Homeless people who are doing it as a support for us.. to draw attention to the real issues.

The legal issues in making these houses available for homeless people would be staggering and insurmountable. Also, they would be temporary, after all that effort and cost.

MUCH better to put energy and time and cost into SOLVING the problem (I know that is radical!).

What is needed is for people to get serious about reducing and eliminating the THREE MILLION-UNIT shortage of low-income housing! This can be done, if people start taking it as seriously as they take issues.

This housing would be low-income and remain that way.... not like fighting for the temporary use of vacant houses, or Habitat housing, which can be sold for market value, and thus lost as low-income stock.

It may not be as "sexy" as protesting about the vacant housing, but it would be much more effective, and actually go a long way towards SOLVING the basic problem!

If you look at my journal, you will see a thread I recently posted about a new "Green" low-income housing project in Denver. THIS is what CAN and should be done!

is an indicator of what we are as a society.

So, we are sweeping them away like worthless debris in order to clean-up for an Elite, financial and political event.

If we are all separate and simply individuals with no actual connection, (whatever you think that to be from biological/ecological to metaphysical) then those not currently affected have nothing to really be concerned with by this.

If there is a connection or a unity of life, then the bell tolls for thee. It is coming to your doorstep at some point. There is no immunity in conceptual boundaries, in that case.

... for their own homeless folks and ship them there.

This has been happening for years, at least since the late 90s when I was doing public health-related research there, including studies within the homeless population itself.

I guess it beats buying them 1-way tickets to Alaska. But it is not right, wherever the homeless are sent.

born, and if virgins should be tossed into volcano cauldrons too, right?

If there was a budget for this, it would show up in the places where they're supposed to be from. AND, from personal experience, the word of mouth among street people at state agencies would be "my buddy got a ticket to Hawaii and I want one, too." Working with the homeless as I have, I have never heard anyone mention this. When I first heard this Hawaiian urban myth (I still have family there), my response was that this story is just a way for the Hawaiian authorities to deny it's their problem to solve.

NONE of this will stop until "progressives" get active in this issue, and start DEMANDING Housing For All... EVERYWHERE!

This is what could happen all over the nation, if only people would become activists on our behalf!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1113198

... conducting interviews on AODA issues (alcohol and other drug abuse), was insufficient for the posters above. One of the things we asked was where the interviewees were from originally, how long they had been in HI and why they had come. It was not uncommon to be told that they had come because they had been provided a one-way ticket by someone. Those tickets were provided by government social service agencies, churches and no doubt family members on the mainland. (I should have said in my original post that the tickets were purchased by a number of sources. When I got back to DU and found the several skeptics above, it was too late to edit my post.)

A quick Google search (the first three pages that came up) for "Hawaii homeless one way ticket" found references to such actions taking place with the homeless in question originating in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit. I found one reference quoting a Hawaii social worker who said that a number of her clients had told her that's how they ended up in Hawaii. (She also said that clients often had to state to the originating ticket buyer that they had "family" in Hawaii, but that was not always verified.)

Thanks also for mentioning "Greyhound therapy", a similar and quite common despicable practice on the mainland. That strategy is pretty well known among people who work with and/or study homeless populations. In my quick search, there were references to New York City providing one-way bus tickets to the homeless. I am very familiar with this practice in Western states (New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado) where homeless street drunks were bought one-way bus tickets to California cities when I was studying them (as clients of substance abuse treatment centers I was evaluating) in 1996-2000.

Finally, the same search uncovered a plan for Hawaii's legislature to provide funding to begin doing the opposite -- buying one-way tickets for their homeless to send them back to the mainland. Gov. Abercrombie is quoted repeatedly as promoting this approach.

OK, that's enough self-justification. Google can be y'all's friend, y'all. Try it -- it works for me.

I have to run now, but if you could, I would appreciate the links you found.

This is very important.. the Criminalization of Homelessness!

Thank you very much!

I just want to add that it hurts to hear it all centering on "street drunks". There are so many of us who don't even come close to fitting that description.

We. Are. Human.

Since my research is primarily around AODA issues, in many cases primarily among American Indian populations, that was the population I was interviewing and the chauvinistic short-hand we use too often. You are right -- mine was a very biased and incomplete sub-sample of a very diverse population. I apologize if my statement was overly broad and therefore inaccurate.

Many of us are one tragedy away from homelessness ourselves. In my case, the federal government did everything in its power for a decade to take my home away from me. Fortunately, they did not succeed (though I had to give them 25 acres to keep the rest.

I agree with you completely about our nation's priorities. If we can afford drones and Predator missles to make lots of Iraqis and Afghanis involuntarily homeless, we can afford to house our own homeless populations.

If you Google "Hawaii homeless one way ticket", you'll likely find the same references I did in the first few pages. I've got to get back in the Garden before dark. Nice to chat with you.

What shelters? Is he building new ones?

There is ONE major shelter, IHS, on the entire island (actually two, one for men and one for women and families), plus a few smaller ones such as River of Life. Bear in mind that O'ahu constitutes a decent-sized metro area of around 900,000, that the cost of living is stratospheric (especially if you're working a low-wage job), and, as mentioned above, that other states have had a tendency to ship their chronically homeless people offshore.

And making shelters into PERMANENT HOUSING is just as horrendous as shanty towns, and what the RW wants, but "progressives" can't seem to grasp this.

As for "off-shoring".. again you are correct, but as you can see, there are those who want to pooh-pooh this. :(

THIS is the price of ignoring poor people!