Hawaii lawmakers are pushing for greater oversight on how homeless shelters spend about $13 million annually in state funding, concerned that nearly 600 shelter beds remain empty on any given night while hundreds of homeless people are sleeping in alleyways, under bridges, in parks and in other public spaces.

“People would rather sleep on the streets than go to shelters,” said Sen. Jill Tokuda, chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and a lead sponsor of Senate Bill 2559, which seeks to make shelter space more accommodating while also tying state funding to performance measures.

The bill would require shelters to comply with basic standards, such as having adequate bathroom facilities and storage for personal belongings and partitioned sleeping spaces to provide a modicum of privacy.

The bill would also require shelters to submit annual financial audits to the state Department of Human Services, tie stipend payments to “performance measures that are actually achieved,” repeal the automatic annual renewal of stipends and allow DHS to recoup funding if the provider doesn’t meet certain contract terms.

“This is really about how do we put in place the minimum standards so that we can maximize those shelter contracts that we are already paying for,” said Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe). “Right now, every night, hundreds of beds go empty and we are paying for them.”

Lawmakers are also considering including $5 million to renovate emergency and transitional shelters or establish new space, and cover other unspecified, nonrecurring costs for homeless programs.

Tokuda said the bill grew out of conversations with homeless advocates and service providers.

The bill is receiving criticism from shelter operators, however, who argue that the more stringent financial oversight isn’t needed, that it could lead to “cherry picking” homeless clients and that requirements such as partitions could cut down on the number of beds they provide.

Hawaii has been grappling with its homeless problem for years, but the numbers have continued to climb. The state has the highest rate of homeless per capita nationwide, according to federal statistics.

In October, Gov. David Ige issued an emergency proclamation that, in part, eases procurement rules. In January, the administration announced that it was giving $5 million to Aloha United Way to assist in getting homeless people off the streets.

There are an estimated 7,620 homeless individuals statewide, according to the 2015 Point in Time count, an annual survey. About half of them are living on the streets or in their cars.

The number of unsheltered homeless increased by 23 percent from 2014 to 2015.

The numbers underscore two major obstacles to solving Hawaii’s ballooning homeless problem: There’s a severe shortage of shelter space and affordable housing to accommodate all of Hawaii’s homeless, and as for the shelter that does exist, many homeless don’t want to sleep there or don’t meet acceptance criteria.

On any given night, there may be as many as 586 shelter beds that are empty statewide, according to Scott Morishige, the governor’s coordinator on homelessness.

On Oahu, the average vacancy rate at transitional and emergency shelters for the 2015 fiscal year was 13 percent, according to DHS. For emergency shelters, which have lower barriers to entry, the rate was even higher, at 18 percent — meaning that on average there were about 191 vacant beds.

DHS did not immediately have figures available for vacancy rates at neighbor island shelters.

The Lighthouse Outreach Center in Waipahu, for example, could hold 85 people, but had an average occupancy rate of 45 percent, according to the 2015 fiscal year data.

Tokuda, who toured the facility, said the shelter is “like a gym missing one of its walls.”

“So when it’s really rainy and bad, they try to shove everyone into the nearby church,” she said.

The shelter receives $585,909 annually in state funding to operate.

Bill Hummel, who manages Lighthouse, said Tokuda’s description of the shelter “is accurate, but I don’t know if it is relevant.”

The structure is not the reason people are eschewing Lighthouse, he said.

“People are not coming to Lighthouse because they don’t want to come to shelters,” he said. “That is not something we have control over.”

He said the dormitory-style shelter space is divided into an area for single men, single women and families. The shelter provides a mat to sleep on, a locker, breakfast and dinner.

Hummel conceded that the 2015 occupancy rate was “abysmal.” He said the rate has since improved and the space now houses about 60 to 65 people a night. Its capacity has also increased to 100 people.

Hummel said he didn’t think partitions would make a big difference in attracting people to the shelter, adding that clients often compliment the shelter’s safety, accommodations and treatment by staff.

“I don’t know if the state Legislature is the best body to be making decisions about how homeless shelters should be operated, because frankly I don’t think they know that much about them,” he said.

SB 2559, which last week unanimously passed out of the House Human Services Committee, is also receiving pushback from the Institute for Human Services.

IHS, the largest emergency shelter provider on Oahu, has two shelters in Iwilei — one for women and families and another for men.

For the 2015 fiscal year, the men’s shelter had a maximum capacity of 200 beds, but its occupancy rate averaged about 78 percent. The shelter for women and families, with the same capacity, had an average occupancy rate of 80 percent.

IHS spokesman Kimo Carvalho told the committee on Tuesday that IHS is opposed to the bill as it’s currently written. He said that IHS, which provides open, dormitory-style sleeping arrangements, would suffer a significant decline in capacity if it’s required to partition spaces. He noted that at the men’s shelter, the space is used for both dining and sleeping.

He also said that IHS wants to keep bed space available for when the city and state conduct sweeps of homeless encampments.

“We want to have emergency beds available at any given time because we want to be able to accommodate the state and the city in situations like the Kakaako encampment,” he said, noting that IHS took in 48 people from the encampment during sweeps over a three-week period.

IHS also submitted written testimony opposing linking funding to performance standards, saying that the shelter system is already working on creating a more robust and data-driven evaluation of homeless services that can be provided to the Legislature.

Carvalho also noted that IHS hasn’t received an increase in state stipend funding in a decade. The two shelters receive $1.8 million in DHS shelter stipends, which covers only about half their budget.

Tokuda emphasized that the bill is flexible in terms of imposing shelter standards and performance metrics, leaving the details up to the discretion of DHS.