Living in the car is the fallback sheltering option for many homeless people, though they make up only one subset of the large complex unsheltered population. Maui officials believe that making this a safer option could provide a service to this group. Their experiment with this idea is worth watching, on Oahu and statewide, to see if it could be a useful tool, if not a true solution.

On Sept. 8, Maui Mayor Michael Victorino announced the launch of a pilot program allowing residents who sleep in their vehicles to park overnight in one of the county-owned lots, the one serving the J. Walter Cameron Center in Wailuku. The plan is to open the lot sometime next month to an initial group of 25 to 30 enrollees in the program, who would park there between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., then leave it during the day for public parking use.

The bill, passed unanimously by the Maui County Council, allocates up to $200,000 for the project in the 2023 budget. The Cameron Center is a nonprofit organization that houses other nonprofits with a range of services.

The Council heard from some of the potential clients themselves who testified about being ticketed in their parked cars and the fear of theft or assault while parking in an unprotected stall, according to a committee report. Roving patrols and video cameras will make this lot more secure, and the portable toilets, hand-washing station and trashcans will make it more livable.

This makes sense as a pilot project on a small scale, providing at least a little less chaotic accommodations for those whose car, by default, has become their portable living space. Often these can be families who lost their permanent home but have jobs and children with school routines that should be maintained.

The question is, how well would this suit the rest of the state?

Churches or other private entities have provided havens in similar initiatives. But it doesn’t seem likely to happen on Oahu anytime soon under city sponsorship.

In response to a Honolulu Star-Advertiser query via a city spokesman, Mayor Rick Blangiardi said “this is not a strategy we would subscribe to.”

That reaction seems premature, if not surprising: After all, the administration’s focus has been on the less contained outreach approach it’s dubbed CORE (Crisis Outreach Response and Engagement), using a mobile van staffed with social service specialists.

But the jury is still out on the effectiveness of CORE, so it would be too soon to dismiss Maui’s pilot out of hand.

There are numerous models to mirror, or to learn from their mistakes. Primarily these are in cities along the West Coast, or other warmer climates that attract larger homeless populations and where car-based sheltering might be more tolerable year-round, according to a report by the nonprofit Center for Homeless Inquiries in Sacramento.

Placement of such programs does have to be done with care. In various cities, wary neighbors have worried about disruptions from the lots, especially any located near schools or other sensitive zones.

In the Maui project, participation is limited to those who register with documentation; those who apply would self-select as being willing to follow rules and would get follow-up on what services would help them. Among those, the new ordinance applies a parks rule governing behavior, including barring drinking between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

The hope is that these are people who have just fallen on bad times, who are motivated to get back on their feet before lapsing into chronic homelessness. They may represent just a minority of the unsheltered, but they are important to reach, and to help find their way.