The first of 12 units for Hawaii’s medical respite kauhale arrived Tuesday across the street from The Queen’s Medical Center in the mauka section of the state Department of Health parking lot, steps away from the Governor’s Mansion.

The goal is to help homeless people who need a place to recover after being discharged from any urban Honolulu hospital’s emergency rooms or inpatient beds.

Homeless people, who comprise 30% of all ER visits, often end up on either side of Punchbowl Street outside of Queen’s ER, sometimes in hospital gowns and medical bracelets.

Gov. Josh Green announced the concept of the first medical respite in his “own backyard” a few weeks ago.

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“We are building a medical respite kauhale in our own backyard because in many ways it is an epicenter of people suffering from a lack of care and hygiene support — and because we want to lead by example,” Green said in a news statement. “We need to say ‘yes in my backyard.’ We can and will welcome partnerships to provide the services they need to put them on a path toward healing; we can and will show aloha to our neighbors.”

Dr. Jill Hoggard Green, president and CEO of The Queen’s Health Systems, is “delighted” and “overjoyed” about the new medical respite kauhale being just across the way from Queen’s.

“I think this will be a major step forward in creating better housing, particularly for some of our most vulnerable people in our communities,” she said.

When asked whether the new medical respite kauhale will help get more homeless people out of the hospital faster, she said that Green is “creating an answer to a gap that has not been there in the past and will actually help people heal faster and more effectively.”

The village — constructed by the nonprofit HomeAid Hawaii — will be completely fenced, with 24-hour private security.

“Fortunately, everything we needed was here on island,” Kimo Carvalho, executive director of HomeAid Hawaii, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Tuesday. “We didn’t have to order anything from the mainland.”

Over the course of the week, HomeAid Hawaii will deliver all the prefab units to the site.

“They’re (units) just being placed temporarily until we can level the site, and then from there — later this week — we’re going to be actually placing them and organizing them to where they’re actually going to be,” Carvalho said. “Next week, Monday, we’re going to be doing a perimeter fence and enclosing the site. We’re also going to be then connecting the infrastructure, which includes water, electric and sewage.”

Ten of the 12 units will be used for housing. One of the units will be used as a security unit, and the other will be used as a nursing unit.

A hygiene trailer is being provided by the nonprofit Project Vision Hawai‘i, which will be available for all housed and unhoused neighbors in the community who need a hot shower or a restroom. PVH also will provide registered nurses who will make daily rounds.

James Koshiba, the governor’s coordinator on homelessness, emphasized that “this is a temporary measure.”

“It is designed to address a gap in our current systems that discharge medically frail people back into homelessness,” Koshiba said in a news statement. “This is one step in the process, while we also work to open up respite beds in existing community facilities in about six months.”

This medical respite kauhale is not designed for those who have serious mental or behavioral health issues, Koshiba said.

“This is going to be space for people … that are generally able to perform what hospitals call activities of daily living, Koshiba said. “They can bathe themselves, they can go to the bathroom themselves, with minimal assistance, but they have physical needs in terms of just a space to rest and recover. That’s the target population.”

The goal is to have spaces open for use by the end of the month, Koshiba said.

”The long-term vision is to have multiple kauhale across the island; they’re not all going to be for medical respite, Koshiba said. “These are intended to be villages that can provide long term or permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness and to do it in a very cost-effective way and to do it in a way that encourages a village environment for people to take responsibility for taking care of the place and for each other.”