So what’s the plan to reduce homelessness in Hawaii?

Will squatter camps and “safe zones” return and multiply after the election?

The race for Hawaii governor is turning out to be a close one, with the latest poll suggesting that incumbent Governor David Ige has pulled ahead of challenger Colleen Hanabusa after trailing her a few months back.

But reducing and managing homelessness in Hawaii hasn’t been the hot topic one would expect, given the burning frustration and downright anger about the situation among many voters, not to mention the starkly visible human misery and dangerous violent outbursts.

Honolulu: City of Squalor

The candidates have mostly talked in generalities about their respective upbringings and values, and various broad positions they claim to support.

They’ve talked about the concept of leadership:  Hanabusa saying Hawaii needs strong leadership, implying that Ige’s has been weak; and Ige saying leadership means doing the right thing for the right reasons, implying that Hanabusa’s actions have too often been aimed at benefiting special interests.

Each of them make some valid points.

But both of them seem to shy away from directly addressing homelessness in any meaningful sense.

In today’s paper, Hanabusa said it’s “inexcusable” that Ige hasn’t come up with a real plan to address homelessness during his nearly four years in office.

Her own plan?  It seems that Hanabusa’s plan is to come up with a plan if she’s elected.

The comments were in an article about poll results showing most voters support establishing “safe zones” for homeless people to reside, despite that approach being mostly a failure, waste of resources, and distraction elsewhere.

Translation:  Just get all these thieving druggies, shrieking psychos, and filthy lost souls the hell out of my immediate neighborhood and away from my kids.

The paper recounts that the notorious Waianae Boat Harbor squatter village has been eyed by some as a potential model for more “safe zones,” but has also been criticized for unsanitary conditions and environmental damage.

The obvious question the candidates haven’t answered is: “What, specifically, will you do about the Waianae camp, and when will you do it?”

The camp was big news just a few months ago, when various media reports suggested somewhat breathlessly that conditions there had spun totally out of control and that a dramatic “sweep” of the camp was imminent.

Then Ige said no sweep was coming, and everyone just moved on and inexplicably forgot about the whole thing.

But the camp and its hundreds of residents remain — along with an exploding population of hundreds of dogs and cats — and it’s unclear whether the Ige administration plans to ever do anything to address its more unpleasant aspects: a lack of sanitation, water diverted from the harbor at taxpayer expense, illicit drug use, occasional violence, and a deplorable abdication of responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of numerous children being raised in squalor.

Hanabusa seems equally unwilling to really deal with any of it, and seems to be dog-whistling that she would make the camp permanent in her hometown and spruce it up somehow, though it’s pretty hard to tell what she really means.

Both seem to be taking the politically expedient route of saying and doing nothing of substance.

In the meantime, the City and County of Honolulu continues to transport vagrants from the urban core out to Waianae’s largest homeless shelter, which somehow has room for them despite the hundreds of homeless people living in the huge squatter camp just down the street, along with rampant homelessness all up and down the Waianae coast.  (The city denies that it’s dumping the homeless on the coast, despite increasing concern and criticism).

So where is the leadership and what is the plan?

The best Hawaii can do?