Caldwell talks rail, trash pick-up, homeless problems on Sunrise - www.Housless.org

"Houseless", not homeless!

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Caldwell talks rail, trash pick-up, homeless problems on Sunrise

Posted: Aug 12, 2013 4:16 PM EST Updated: Aug 12, 2013 4:35 PM EST By Ian Scheuring

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) -

(Editors Note: After his appearance on Hawaii News Now Sunrise on Monday, Mayor Caldwell stuck around to answer more of the viewer questions that were posted to our Facebook page. His answers can be found below, with each question taken from Facebook. Mayor Caldwell will return to Sunrise each month for another "Ask The Mayor" segment to answer your questions from Facebook.)

Hawaii Mayor Caldwell

 Ask the Mayor, part 1 (12 August, 2013)

Ask the Mayor, part 2 (12 August, 2013)

Sylvia Dahlby: How does the city plan on maintaining the rail system when it can't maintain roads, water mains, and schools? 

Mayor Caldwell: Rail, when it is up and running, will have only 300 employees, as opposed to TheBus, which has 1,800 employees. The operation and maintenance of rail is going to be less than TheBus system by a lot. The entire system is going to cost more, but we're going to need fewer buses, meaning an all-bus system in 2030 would cost more than a bus-rail system. 

Michele Golujuch: Would you ever consider a bill that required Honolulu residents to pay for trash pick-up to help pay for that service?

Mayor Caldwell: Commercial trash pick-up is something that a lot of people have to pay for in Waikiki, like restaurants and things like that. Perhaps we should explore charging [other commercial customers, like private schools] just like other establishments have to pay. If we did look at doing this, it would probably be in the commercial sector first.

Traci Powers: Cleaning up sidewalks and parks is akin to sweeping the problem under the rug. What are the long term plans to alleviate the homeless population?

Mayor Caldwell: Just moving homeless people from one place to another is crazy and I think it's the definition of insanity. We have pushed this thing called ‘Housing First,' it's a pilot project, where we are going to house the most chronic homeless, the drug addicted or who have a mental illness of some sort, on site, in a home, where they get their treatment.

Gary Gonsalves: What is it going to take to impose a law making it illegal to migrate homeless people from the mainland to Hawaii?

Mayor Caldwell: I wish I could pass such a law. Unfortunately, since we are part of the United States, it is illegal to prohibit people from traveling between states. Therefore, we need to develop alternative solutions, such as working with providers to return homeless back to their families.

Barbara Bonura: Potholes! Why such expensive registration for vehicles but the roads still suck!

Mayor Caldwell: As of December, 43% of our roads are graded substandard. We have a program in which all of those roads will be repaved within 5 years at 300 lane miles per year. We are on target to hit the first 300 miles this December, and are working hard to improve our roads for years to come.

Marie Hite: Our traffic problems on the North Shore at Lani's... Turtle Beach.. is now an everyday problem. What used to take 10 minutes Monday through Friday is now taking drivers half an hour. Weekends are far worse. Please send someone out there to figure out how to solve this traffic. Way too many people crossing the streets to go to the beach. It's an accident waiting to happen.

Mayor Caldwell: I sympathize with the plight of those who live on the North Shore, particularly on weekends when the surf is large during the winter. Kamehameha Highway is a state owned road, though the City is considering several alternatives at Laniakea and will need the state's cooperation to implement them. One is to offer angled parking with barriers for crossing only in certain areas. The long term solution is to move Kam Highway mauka around Laniakea, but this is going to take a while, since it is a wetland on the mauka side of the road and will need EPA clearance along with other federal and state permits.

Candice Kehaulani: When will the city start paving the roads that REALLY need it! Like the Meheula Parkway in front of the Mililani Post Office! They are always paving roads that don't need it.

Mayor Caldwell: Meheula Parkway is one of the roads that will be repaved within the next 12 months.

Michele Golojuch: When will the building of our wonderful rail system begin again? I'm tired of driving to work. I can't wait to ride!

Mayor Caldwell: If everything goes well, we anticipate starting construction again next month.

Linda Fowler: How will you handle the noticeable rise of crime in our state? It seems like every week I read the news someone has been mugged, shot, or murdered and I bet that's not even the half of it. Please justify the pay raise that HPD has gotten when the crime rate has raised so much in the last few years.

Mayor Caldwell: We are lucky that Honolulu is one of the safest big cities in America. HPD is out there every day making sure that we are safe as we go about our daily lives. During the summer we do see an increase in property crime that does decrease in the fall, and police are working as hard as they can to deal with that property crime problem. 

PuaOlena Ngatuvai: Why are the camping permits so expensive now? $300 a day to camp? If that's the case, bathrooms should be clean (always toilet paper, no graffiti, etc).Also it should stay opened 24 hours. There are thousands that camp at Kokololio Beach & there is no light in parking lot, should also be provided by the state, security should be around the clock, for $300 it better be worth it!

Mayor Caldwell: You can get a city camping permit for as little as 32 dollars for three days. Click here to see how.

Hawaii related:

Homeless man charged in Waikiki burglary, assault

 

UPDATE to: Aloha! Hawaii caters to "Haves", "Have-more" while flying (forcing) the "Have-less" & "Have-not" off islands

Lest we not forget!

"Houseless", not homeless!

Shelters seeing more elderly homeless - www.Houseless.org

"Houseless", not homeless!

Via

Shelters seeing more elderly homeless

• By Deb Gruver The Wichita Eagle 
   Published Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013, at 2:24 p.m. 
   Updated Monday, Feb. 11, 2013, at 7:18 p.m.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/02/09/2669663/shelters-seeing-more-elderly-homeless.html#storylink=cpy

Fernando Salazar/The Wichita Eagle:
The Inter-Faith Inn opens its doors to women that were waiting in subfreezing temperatures Wednesday night. (Dec. 26, 2012)

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/02/09/2669663/shelters-seeing-more-elderly-homeless.html#storylink=cpy

On the afternoon of Jan. 17, when the temperature dipped below freezing, a family from Kingman drove to Wichita, dumped a 78-year-old relative at the Inter-Faith Inn homeless shelter and quickly drove away.

They left her on the sidewalk with her wheelchair and a few suitcases.

“She wasn’t crying,” case manager Amanda Merritt recalled. “But she was upset about the situation. She said they were kicking her out.”

They left so quickly that no one from the shelter was able to talk to them, Merritt said. They didn’t even knock on the shelter door to make sure there was room at the inn.

“That’s unbelievable that someone would do that,” said Janis Cox, co-chairwoman of Advocates to End Chronic Homelessness, an area faith-based volunteer group.

Shelter staff took the woman, who was in poor health, inside.

To accommodate her frailties, the staff hustled to set her up with a room on the ground floor.
She stayed at the shelter more than two weeks until she found an out-of-state friend who agreed to take her in. She left Wichita a week ago.

The woman’s story may seem unbelievable, but it’s not that rare, said Sandy Swank, director of housing and homeless services for Inter-Faith Ministries.

A 2010 study by the Homeless Research Institute, an arm of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, projected that the number of elderly people who are homeless would increase by 33 percent, from 44,172 in 2010 to 58,772 by 2020, and would double to 95,000 by 2050.

“It seems like there are two main things going on,” said Nan Roman, president and chief executive of the alliance in Washington, D.C.

“One is that there’s a group of people who are homeless who are becoming older. They were younger homeless people, so the population is aging that way. The other thing is that our whole population is aging. Even though older people are less likely to be homeless than other people because they have more of a safety net, because there are more and more older people in general, we are going to have more and more elderly people vulnerable to homelessness.”

Numbers up locally

Swank sees the numbers increasing locally.

“I’ve been working at Inter-Faith since October 1990,” she said. “In the beginning, we’d have an occasional elderly person come in, but if they came in, they came in with someone else. They always had someone to look after them. In the last 10 years, we have seen more elderly people, and each year it seems like the number increases.”

Swank remembers another woman left at the shelter. She arrived in a hospital gown with no shoes. There was snow on the ground. The front left wheel of her wheelchair was off.
“I was just outraged,” Swank said.

The woman eventually was able to move into an apartment of her own.

Inter-Faith’s winter shelter has served 13 people over age 62 this year, more than double last year’s total of five.

Swank points to a few theories about why the numbers are up – including, of course, the economy.
“Years ago, families did look after families,” Swank said. “Today, because of the economy, a lot of people are at risk themselves. I think families can’t afford to take care of each other like they used to.

And we’ve become more mobile. We move away from our families of origin. We’re spread out.”
Inter-Faith is seeing mostly elderly people whose spouses have died, Swank said. Their spouses might have left behind a pile of medical expenses or credit card debt. She remembers one elderly woman whose husband died, leaving her with debt she didn’t even know about.

“They end up losing everything,” she said. “They’re pretty vulnerable. They don’t have a lot of experience, especially when the partner that’s deceased was in charge of decisions. So they’re pretty clueless about what to do.”

Families ‘very stressed’

Public awareness about the increase in homelessness among the elderly is a good place to start, said Cox, chairwoman of the area task force.

“Families are very stressed,” she said. “With social services being cut by the government and nonprofits not receiving more donations, it just puts normal families under even more stress.”

The Homeless Research Institute recommended as part of its study that policymakers and leaders:

• Increase the supply of subsidized, affordable housing for seniors.

• Create sufficient permanent supportive housing to end chronic homelessness.

• Conduct research to better understand the specific needs of elderly people who are homeless.

“We’re millions of units short of low-cost housing,” said Roman, with the national alliance. “Not attending to it is not very smart because especially with older people, they’re going to get hospitalized, they’re going to get put in nursing homes, and those are very expensive things to happen. It’s much cheaper to keep them in regular housing.”

Roman also emphasized that people who are homeless age much faster. So a 50-year-old person without a home will have far more medical problems than a 50-year-old person who does have a place to call home.

The oldest person at Inter-Faith’s winter shelter was 83, Swank said.

She recalled a military veteran who didn’t have any living relatives.

“We sort of adopted him like a grandpa,” she said. “He had terminal lung cancer. We tore my office out of here and put a hospital bed in there. We’ve done extraordinary things. It’d be real easy to just say ‘no,’ but no can do.”

He stayed at the shelter until his pain became unbearable. He wanted to die at the shelter, Swank said, where he had some semblance of family.

“But we couldn’t administer pain meds,” Swank said. “We put him in an ambulance to the hospital.”

Homeless ‘off and on’ for 20 years

Dale Chilen recently landed in Inter-Faith’s winter shelter after a visit to the Robert J. Dole Veterans Administration Medical Center’s emergency room. A cab delivered the 78-year-old to the shelter on a Saturday night.

Swank just happened to see him arrive.

“He was so frail, in a wheelchair,” Swank said. “I paid the cab driver to get him to Safe Haven. He was too vulnerable anywhere else. We’re not a one-size-fits-all shelter, although sometimes I’d like to be.”

Chilen said he was born and raised in Kansas but most recently had been living in Reno, Nev.
He arrived in Salina at the beginning of the year, he said, “walked about 20 feet and fell and broke my hip.”

He said he went to a hospital in Salina and then to a senior center. He eventually came to Wichita.
Chilen stayed at Safe Haven, an Inter-Faith shelter for severely and persistently mentally ill or physically disabled people who are chronically homeless, for about a month.

The shelter “has been real good to me,” he said.

On Wednesday, he started moving into a low-income apartment for seniors with the help of Inter-Faith Ministries and the Veterans Administration.

The VA Center said it could not talk about specific patients because of privacy rules.

“We’re going to review the process to ensure we’re providing the best care for our veterans,” said Tyler Kilian, supervisor of ancillary services there.

Chilen, a Korean War veteran, said he has been homeless “off and on” for 20 years.

“I hate to admit it,” he said from his wheelchair, proudly looking at a brochure about his new apartment complex.

Reach Deb Gruver at 316-268-6400 or dgruver@wichitaeagle.com.

Lest we not forget!

"Houseless", not homeless!