It was a pretty fantastic success claim by Honolulu’s homeless honcho: Forty percent of the homeless people in shelters on the island are placed into housing each month.
Turns out that was total bullshit.
What he um, er, uh, really meant to say was that of the people who leave shelters each month, forty percent of them go into permanent housing.
And of the people who don’t leave shelters each month, none of them go into housing.
Kudos to Hawaii News Now for calling BS and holding them accountable.
So if one hundred left a shelter, forty ended up in housing — if you believe the city now. (And if only ten left a shelter, four ended up in housing).
The other sixty percent — much more than half — go back on the street, into jail, drug rehab or, it sure seems, join the growing throng that’s digging in for the long haul on the sunny Waianae Coast, where enforcement efforts are more, ahem, sporadic (or nonexistent).
The percentage of total shelter guests who are placed into housing each month ranges from seven to eleven percent — a far, far cry from the forty percent touted by the city.
Meanwhile, the city keeps insisting that it’s not dumping vagrants from urban Honolulu out on the coast, but is merely transporting them to a shelter of their preference — which sometimes just happens to be in Waianae.
Some of the newcomers remain at the shelter. But others unfortunately, well, ahem, wander off.
Even if the city is telling the truth — or something close to the truth — the big mystery remains: with so many homeless people up and down the Waianae coast already, how is it that a shelter there has any room for homeless townies delivered by the city?
Honolulu Homeless Crisis 