The city hopes to offer permanent shelter to 115 people under the initial $2 million Housing First contract.
The one-year contract was awarded to the Institute for Human Services on Thursday, and on Monday, Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s staff announced the first details to the City Council Intergovernmental Affairs and Human Services Committee.
The contract, which starts Nov. 1, aims at providing a home and social services for 115 chronically homeless individuals, with 40 percent expected to come from Waikiki, 40 percent from downtown Honolulu and 20 percent from West Oahu, Managing Director Ember Shinn said.
Chronically homeless is defined as those who have been without shelter for at least a year and/or are prevented from getting ahead financially due to serious issues such as mental illness, substance abuse and other medical conditions. The national Housing First concept, being adopted loosely by the city, places the priority on providing permanent supportive housing to the chronically homeless and makes tackling the root causes that may have led to homelessness initially a secondary priority.
The City Council approved an unprecedented $47 million in capital improvement dollars this year to purchase and develop affordable housing for the homeless and disadvantaged. But city officials said that developing such housing would take at least a year, while they want to house homeless individual immediately.
Enter the $2 million contract with IHS, which won over a second bid by the Kalaeloa-based U.S. Vets. The contractor will identify those meeting the chronically homeless profile and then provide rental vouchers to help them find shelter in units within the community.
Shinn told the Council committee that while the city received solid proposals from two organizations, IHS was picked largely because the agency has a long-standing relationship with town-based rental agents and landlords in providing rentals for the chronically homeless.
Through the proposed "scattered sites" model, residential units for the homeless would be spread throughout numerous buildings in the three identified regions, she said.
IHS is required to give a minimum of 40 percent of its vouchers to clients from Waikiki, 40 percent from downtown Honolulu and 20 percent from West Oahu.
Also, IHS committed to providing shelter for 115 people, more than the 100 people that U.S. Vets said it could help.
IHS officials said they are working with four subcontractors and a host of other nonprofits as their partners. In all, the project will employ about 10 outreach workers.
About $1 million will be dedicated to housing vouchers themselves, while the other $1 million will provide social services, case management and administration.
In a related matter, Shinn told the committee that the administration is spending about $425,000 to hire eight temporary employees for a new Strategic Development Office that will serve many of the same functions that the city housing department had done before it was shuttered in 1998 in the wake of the Ewa Villages scandal. From 1993 to 1997 a city property management branch chief used his position as a relocation expert to manipulate the bidding process, diverting some $5.8 million from the Ewa Villages commercial relocation fund into the accounts of companies set up by friends and relatives.
Shinn told the committee its two main functions will be consolidating the management of the city’s land assets and developing those assets.
Council members have asked the administration over the past two years to take on several major development initiatives, including rethinking the long-term lease of 12 city housing projects under the Honolulu Affordable Housing Preservation Initiative, Shinn said.
The office "is not about affordable housing, it is not about homelessness," she said. "It is about the strategic management and development of city assets — city land and city property."
Shinn said the city shouldn’t begin developing the $47 million in CIP (capital improvement project) moneys for Housing First until the new office is operational.
The administration is using existing funding to pay for the hiring of the eight employees. Existing city employees from other agencies could join them if necessary, Shinn said.
