A new chapter for Hawaii’s original residential substance abuse treatment program begins Tuesday when Sand Island Treatment Center relocates to its second site in its 60-year history, behind the Institute for Human Services’ homeless family shelter in Iwilei.

The founders of Sand Island Treatment Center started helping island residents with their addictions on Oct. 15, 1961, by turning on vehicle headlights to hold meetings in an abandoned chapel at the site of a former World War II internment camp for occupants of Italian descent on Sand Island.

The organization has the Pacific region’s first and oldest treatment license, No. 0001.

On Tuesday, Sand Island Treatment Center will join a growing Iwilei community of new and expanded services for homeless people, who often have substance abuse and mental health issues.

“We welcome the Sand Island treatment center to the urban core of Honolulu,” Connie Mitchell, IHS’ executive director, said in an email to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “The potential synergy between our programs and for revitalizing our neighborhood makes this a win for all of us.”

Councilwoman Radiant Cordero, whose district includes Iwilei, told the Star-Advertiser in an email, “We are in need of more wrap-around services throughout the island. At the same time, stringent oversight should be implemented to ensure responsible use of taxpayer funding for any serv­ice providers receiving government subsidies and grants. I’ve also been adamant in the need for contingency plans to ensure transition to permanent housing is a component as a partnership to all social services.”

Sand Island had to move from its current 53-bed location next door to the city’s Sand Island wastewater treatment plant so the city can expand and address violations of the federal Clean Water Act that the Environmental Protect Agency found dumped millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the ocean over years.

Under a federal consent decree, the city was ordered to pay a penalty of $1.6 million and fix sewage spills, requiring it to expand onto the nearly 1-acre site of its neighboring Sand Island Treatment Center.

The treatment center’s new 123-bed home behind IHS’ family shelter was a former federal halfway house purchased under former Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration to allow it to move off of Sand Island.

But COVID-19 forced the three-story building to be pressed into emergency serv­ice to quarantine homeless people suspected of contracting the virus rather than risk spreading COVID- 19 through homeless shelters and encampments.

Sand Island Treatment Center’s current and future residents will live in communal quarters on the second and third floors. The ground-level floor will be used for counseling and administrative functions.

Most of the clients at Sand Island Treatment Center have criminal convictions related to substance abuse and were ordered into the two-year program by judges around the state as a term of probation rather than serve time in jail or prison.

The state funds the program, and clients often come from Hawaii’s drug court, veterans court and mental health court. Other funding comes from clients’ public insurance.

“We take the most challenging cases,” said Sand Island’s clinic administrator, Kevin Konishi. “We’re looking at somebody who’s had a long history of addiction, chronic and severe, and likely has suffered long periods of unemployment or maybe has never been employed. Often the cases have involved homelessness or incarceration.”

The goal is to give clients — such as Bianca Ching, 29 — new skills to prepare for sober lives and better chances to succeed once they graduate.

Sand Island has a success rate of 33%, which it calls the “gold standard” for residential treatment.

Ching lives at Sand Island Treatment Center and has five more months to graduation while looking forward to moving into the bigger facility in Iwilei.

She answered the phone at Tropical J’s — a custom awning manufacturer on Ulupono Street — where she works with five other Tropical J’s employees who all graduated ahead of her and give Ching support and motivation at work.

“One has been clean for 14 years, another for nine years, (another for) five years and two are coming up on for three years,” Ching said.

The Sand Island graduates work in Tropical J’s sewing and wood departments or as installers.

Ching called Tropical J’s owners, Gary and Jeri Barnes, “very helpful and very encouraging. They don’t make you feel like a bad person.”

Konishi said other island employers reach out for prospective employees from Sand Island Treatment Center, where clients are taught how to apply for jobs, write a resume, fill out job applications and “to show up, have a great attitude, be flexible and demonstrate the principals of recovery. They don’t have problems at work because they don’t call in sick if they’re hung over or they’re using. If there is a problem, their supervisor or owner can call us up and do a conference call with a therapist, treatment team and client. They actually shine big time in the work force.”

Ching was court ordered into the Sand Island Treatment Center and ticked off a long list of skills she is learning in her 19 months of treatment:

“They teach us to suit up and show up,” Ching said. “We’re able to go to work, go home, be helpful. They teach us how to stay in the moment, how powerful our mind is, structure, communication, safety, how to be more helpful to society. They teach us boundaries, how to be self-sufficient without relying on our families, how to be better people in society, be consistent and dependable. The repetition is what really helped me. Thanksgiving was (Thursday), and I have a lot to be thankful for. The direction I’m heading in is beyond words. I couldn’t be more grateful.”

Ching is from Hauula and is working to repair strained relationships with her family. She is divorced and working on skills to be more involved in the lives of her five children, ages 2, 4, 5, 9 and 12.

The Sand Island program led to her job at Tropical J’s as an administrative assistant in accounts receivable. Her plan is to stay in town and closer to work and eventually save enough to get a place on her own while living sober.

Ching called her job, progress at the Sand Island Treatment Center and upcoming graduation “an opportunity I don’t want to go to waste.”