Before the urgent issue of homelessness gets sabotaged by political bickering, it’s the political leaders ourselves who must stop and take us in a more successful direction. Pointing fingers and laying blame are never productive. For my part, I recognize that in my impatience for wanting faster progress, and wanting to openly and quickly share information with the public, I’ve been criticized for not communicating with the City Council, the state and other partners. My team and I are going to improve on that front, as well as vetting all project ideas from others. While not every idea is do-able, we’ve solicited suggestions from Council in particular and agree to consider them all.

Here’s where we stand.

Honolulu’s strategy to reduce homelessness includes four major areas: 1) Enforcement of stored property, sidewalk nuisance and sit-lie laws; 2) Transitional shelter and navigation into permanent housing; 3) Housing First, which provides housing immediately with little or no barriers; and 4) Affordable housing, including accessory dwelling units (ADUs).

With a combination of these actions, we will probably never eliminate homelessness, but we can make huge improvements. Our goal is to get as many individuals and families as possible off the street so they can stabilize and improve their lives.

Housing First, navigation centers and hygiene centers are best practices of addressing homelessness across the country. For the long term, we need to increase our affordable housing inventory so that more people don’t slip so easily into homelessness.

Just as important is returning the use of our sidewalks, parks and public areas back to the public. No one, homeless or not, should be allowed to take over these public areas. We live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Let’s do better to maintain our natural beauty, and provide our citizens and visitors with a safe and clean environment.

Over the past two fiscal years, the Honolulu City Council has appropriated $64 million in capital improvement funds in addition to a combination of monies from community development, affordable housing and general funds to address homelessness.

A lot of good has come from this funding, which includes placing 176 people into Housing First units, finding permanent housing for 638 veterans, and serving 60 to 70 homeless people a day at Hawaii’s first hygiene center at Pauahi Hale in Chinatown.

Particularly praiseworthy is the Hale Mauliola navigation center at Sand Island that utilizes refurbished shipping containers and began accepting residents last November. To date, Hale Mauliola, through The Institute for Human Services, has provided services to more than 100 formerly homeless individuals, and of those, 27 have obtained permanent housing. The navigation center seeks to serve 130 people in its first year. Hale Mauliola is a pipeline that connects clients with Housing First, and 51 percent of those already moved off our streets came from Honolulu’s urban core.

We are working on the purchases of several projects including a building in Iwilei, a site on Beretania Street, land in Waianae, in addition to a previously announced project in Makiki, soon to start construction.

What needs to happen to make real progress?

My goal for the upcoming city budget is to fund eight positions for a new Asset Management and Development Division within the Department of Community Services. This will enable the city to quickly move more people off our streets, which is a priority shared by me and the City Council.

Council members have provided us the “lumber” to tackle homeless in the form of capital funding, but now we need the “carpenters” to quickly build a solid foundation. Currently, only two people are tasked with negotiating real estate deals, supervising the refurbishment of properties and their development, communicating with area stakeholders and purchasing hard assets such as the containers found at Hale Mauliola.

I have little patience for political gamesmanship or bureaucratic responses to an urgent situation.

Rather, the residents of Honolulu and those who visit our island deserve a rapid and unified response on the issue of homelessness and affordable housing, and I stand ready to fully cooperate with the City Council, and state, and the community toward this goal.