Landlords heard tearful pleas to open their hearts and homes — along with the practical realities of renting to low-income and homeless tenants — as Gov. David Ige and Mayor Kirk Caldwell teamed up at Tuesday’s Landlord Summit to try to sway property owners to house the homeless.

In all, 337 social service workers, landlords, property managers, government officials and others gathered at Dole Cannery to try to dispel myths — and in some cases air grievances — about renting to low-income and homeless tenants.

Hirotoshi and Kimberly Pacarro had been homeless for four years in the Ward Avenue area after their concierge business went under following the economic recession.

Then in March a landlord accepted their Section 8 housing voucher for a one-bedroom apartment on Piikoi Street that Kimberly, 50, found on Craigslist.

The voucher allows the Pacarros to pay just $37 toward their monthly $1,300 rent. The balance is paid directly to their landlord through the Hawaii Public Housing Authority.

At one point in their four years living on the street, the couple had slept right in front of the unit, the Pacarros said.

“What she (the landlord) did for us I couldn’t even imagine,” Hirotoshi, 48, told the crowd.

The landlord also gave the couple two futons and four blankets on the day they moved in and said, “And here’s $20. Take your wife to dinner,” Hirotoshi said as the crowd applauded and the couple wept.

The Pacarros now have jobs at Japanese restaurants and are doing outreach themselves to help homeless people get off the streets.

“Have an open heart and compassion,” Hirotoshi said. “You folks can make a difference.”

The warm feeling in Dole Cannery’s Pomaikai Ballroom quickly turned chilly when property owner and Ewa Beach landlord Victoria Roy stood to talk about her experience eight years ago renting the bottom half of her six-bedroom house to drug users who burned her carpet, destroyed doors and punched a hole in the bathroom wall, costing Roy $15,000 in repairs, $5,000 for an attorney and $700 to sheriff’s deputies to get her tenants out.

Roy, a single mother, said the couple used their Section 8 voucher to cover $90 of the $1,500 rent, which she needed to pay her mortgage. Even though the tenants skipped out on five months’ worth of rent, Roy still was paid $7,050 of the $7,500 she was owed.

But she never recovered her out-of-pocket costs to evict the tenants and repair damage they left behind.

Roy called it her “first and last experience” renting to low-income, Section 8 tenants.

But city and state housing officials are primarily pushing landlords to rent units to homeless people — especially military veterans — using the national “Housing First” model, which assures landlords that rent will be paid, damage will be covered and tenants will receive so-called “wrap-around” social services to help those contending with alcohol, drug and mental health problems.

Primrose Leong-Nakamoto, a property manager with Nakamoto Realty, sat on a panel of landlords, housing officials and social service providers and told the audience that she’s had no problems renting either high-rise apartments or single-family units to homeless people, even those with drug problems.

“I’ve dealt with many and I never had a problem,” Leong-Nakamoto said. “A lot of our homeowners are afraid to take the first step.” Maintaining that landlords have no need to be fearful, she added, “Help is right there before you.”

In response to a question on whether other communities are shipping their homeless to Hawaii, Greg Payton — chairman of Partners in Care, a coalition of 30 nonprofit providers dedicated to ending homelessness on Oahu — said that’s a myth heard around the country.

“People want to think that because it’s the easy solution … ‘Let’s send them back,’” Payton said. “It’s kind of a misconception and a little bit of an easy answer to think that everyone’s from somewhere else.”

The last “point in time” count conducted in January, which found 7,620 homeless across the state, also showed that 90 percent of Oahu’s homeless had an Oahu address going back at least a year.

Payton had attended a homeless conference in Cleveland where the same sentiment was expressed that other communities were exporting their homeless to Cleveland.

“They said, ‘Everyone’s sending their homeless to Cleveland,’” Payton said. “Anybody ever been to Cleveland? Why would anybody go to Cleveland?”

The Landlord Summit was held as U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz joined Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Patty Murray, D-Wash., in introducing legislation they said would help prevent youth homelessness, improve support services and housing for youth and families, and help ensure children are raised in supportive, stable households. The bill also is designed to help youth who “age out” of the foster care system.

The legislation proposes using the Housing First model to address youth and family homelessness.

Ige opened Tuesday’s Landlord Summit by highlighting the progress this year in trying to reach the nationwide goal of ending homelessness for military veterans on Oahu by Dec. 31.

The year started with 149 veterans on the streets. Today 55 remain without homes or shelter.

“We are beginning to see what can happen when we all work together,” Ige said. “There’s still much, much more that has to happen.”

Before the Landlord Summit ended with a video appeal by first lady Michelle Obama to end homelessness for military veterans, Caldwell spoke last and told the crowd “good questions had been asked.”

As a lawyer, the mayor acknowledged that the landlord-tenant code should be rewritten because it’s skewed in preference to tenants.

“In some cases we need to give better answers to landlords,” Caldwell said. “We also need to make landlords more comfortable to step up, and we need to work on that. But I want to ask you to please help us.”

Each person who attended Tuesday’s Landlord Summit was given a yellow “pledge card” asking them whether they would be willing to rent to a homeless person.

It will now be up to landlords and property owners to see how many actually come forward.

As the summit wrapped up, Jun Yang, executive director of the city Office of Housing, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “We know there are issues. We wanted to dispel some of the myths. So everything was talked about.”