In a step intended to focus more attention on efforts to help the homeless, Mayor Rick Blangiardi wants to upsize the city Office of Housing. With plans to provide more resources for services, it’s been renamed the Office of Housing and Homelessness. Let’s hope the name change comes with results — and soon, to meet the growing need.

Speaking on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Spotlight Hawaii webcast on Friday, Blangiardi described the city’s long-standing challenges in tackling homelessness as a “scalable problem,” adding, “You have to come to the realization that our demographics have shifted on this island — 50% of people living paycheck to paycheck is a very precarious situation.”

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic rattled Hawaii’s economy, a large portion of households here were already falling into that cash-strapped predicament. A 2020 Aloha United Way report indicated no improvement over the span of a decade in the number of working residents situated just above the poverty line and unable to keep up with the cost of living.

The report — built on data compiled before the coronavirus surfaced — estimated that about one-third of Hawaii’s households were living at the ALICE level (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed); and nearly 10% were living in poverty. Given that many of these and other households have since been hit with furloughs, layoffs and other financial hardship, slipping into homelessness is an urgent concern.

Amid the pandemic, federal coronavirus relief funding has helped keep struggling households afloat. The city is now prepping to deliver $114 million in welcome federal funds — flowing from the $1.9 trillion relief package — for further rent and utility relief, providing up to 12 months of financial help for qualified households.

Due to COVID-19 concerns, Hawaii did not take part in this year’s census of the unsheltered homeless population, conducted as part of the national Point in Time Count. But in his debut State of the City speech last week, Blangiardi said the unsheltered homeless population now exceeds the sheltered, and “we need new ideas and new vision” for workable solutions.

To address the chronically homeless population, which typically includes a substantial count of mentally ill and drug-dependent individuals, Blangiardi wants to shelve former Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s “compassionate disruption” policy — based on “sit-lie” and “stored property” enforcement laws.

Instead, he proposes a “vision of shifting away from police being the first responders,” with social workers and medical personnel deployed as the initial “point of contact.” Honolulu Hale is now looking at a promising program in Denver called Support Team Assistance Response, which sends a paramedic and a mental health professional to respond to calls related to nonviolent problems such as trespassing, indecent exposure and welfare checks.

It seems likely that such a program could work here — perhaps in tandem with police officers who in recent years have undergone “Crisis Intervention Team” training — a Honolulu Police Department partnership with the National Alliance on Mental Illness Hawaii, Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center and other community partners.

As Blangiardi now also sizes up how to expand the city’s inventory of affordable housing and facilities that help the homeless find permanent housing, he should not entirely discard the compassionate disruption policy, even though it’s yielded mixed results. Among the keepers: the new administration should aim to build upon successes that Caldwell pegged as the “compassionate” element in his policy. They include initiatives such as the Kahauiki Village partnership with the state and business leaders, and Punawai Rest Stop in Iwilei, which provides various levels of help for the wide-ranging needs of people contending with homelessness.