In addition to supporting folks who need to sleep in their automobiles, please consider passing a version of this Hanai Kakou Act that would provide emergency housing to all residents who need it.
Aloha Chair Sinenci and Members of the Water Authority, Social Services, and Parks Committee:
This written testimony is submitted regarding the update on the pilot project using designated County parking lots for human habitation. Because this item is before the Committee as a status update on the County’s pilot project, this is an appropriate time to ask direct questions about capacity, effectiveness, accountability, and whether the current approach is producing measurable improvement for Maui residents.
At the center of this issue is a basic concern: Maui does not appear to have sufficient local capacity, staffing depth, or specialized professional infrastructure to address the full range of homelessness-related needs now visible in the community. That is not an attack on the intentions of staff or service providers. Many people working in this area may be dedicated and sincere. However, dedication is not the same as capacity, and passion is not the same as measurable success. If public funding continues year after year while the visible crisis continues to worsen, then the County has an obligation to reassess whether the structure, staffing, and operating assumptions behind these efforts are adequate.
One of the most important problems in the public discussion is that homelessness is too often treated as though it were a single category requiring a single policy response. It is not. A person who recently lost housing because of rent burden, job disruption, family breakdown, or disaster-related displacement is not in the same position as a person suffering from severe methamphetamine addiction, serious untreated psychiatric illness, or chronic behavioral instability. Likewise, a working person sleeping in a vehicle is not similarly situated to a person who cannot function independently without intensive clinical intervention. If the County continues to design policy as though these situations are interchangeable, then County programs will continue to produce incomplete and often disappointing results.
For residents who have simply lost housing, the County should be focused on rapid rehousing, short-term rental assistance, employment assistance, transportation support, replacement of identification documents, and other practical interventions that prevent people from falling into chronic homelessness. In many cases, these are the residents most likely to stabilize quickly if help is delivered efficiently and early. It is generally less costly to prevent chronic homelessness than to attempt to reverse it after years of instability.
For working homeless individuals and others living in vehicles, a temporary safe parking model may have some practical value, but only if it is implemented with discipline, urgency, and clear limits. Such a program should include security, restroom access, showers, case management, rules of conduct, reasonable time limits, and a clearly defined exit strategy into permanent housing or another stable placement. A safe parking area should not evolve into a permanent encampment under government management. If the County cannot maintain structure, enforce rules, and move people toward actual housing outcomes, then the program risks becoming a holding pattern rather than a solution.
For individuals suffering from severe substance addiction, housing by itself is not likely to resolve the underlying condition. Treatment capacity matters. If Maui lacks enough inpatient, residential, or clinically appropriate recovery resources, then the County must be honest about that limitation and address it directly through partnerships, contracting, or coordinated off-island support where necessary. The same is true, perhaps even more strongly, for people suffering from severe mental illness. Serious psychiatric disorders often require specialized clinicians, secure treatment environments, continuity of medical care, and at times legal intervention or court-supervised processes. Counties do not always have the ability to provide the full continuum of psychiatric care on their own, and it is reasonable to say openly that Maui appears to have major capacity limitations in this area.
That is why stronger coordination with Oʻahu and other outside systems is necessary. This should not be treated as controversial. If Maui does not have enough psychiatrists, addiction professionals, treatment beds, case management capacity, or other specialized personnel to meet current needs, then insisting on purely local handling does not demonstrate compassion or independence; it demonstrates institutional denial. The County should identify where local capacity ends, where outside expertise is needed, and how those partnerships can be built quickly and transparently.
At the same time, the County must stop treating enforcement and compassion as mutually exclusive concepts. They are not. A functioning community can provide services while also protecting public spaces, public health, and public safety. Illegal dumping, trespassing, vehicle abandonment, sidewalk obstruction, harassment, sanitation violations, and other unlawful conduct should be addressed consistently. Public disorder should not be normalized simply because government is also attempting to provide services. The public has a right to expect both compassion for vulnerable people and accountability for conduct that harms neighborhoods, businesses, parks, sidewalks, and shared spaces.
Most importantly, funding should be tied to results. Public programs should not be insulated from scrutiny merely because the issue is difficult. In fact, the more difficult and expensive the issue becomes, the greater the need for measurable performance standards. Every publicly funded provider or County-managed strategy should be required to report concrete outcomes, including how many people were placed into permanent housing, how many remained housed after six months and twelve months, how many obtained employment where employment was an appropriate goal, how many completed addiction or behavioral health treatment, how many returned to homelessness, and what the cost was per successful long-term placement. Those are not hostile questions. They are the minimum accountability questions taxpayers should ask after years of funding.
If the unsheltered population continues to grow despite years of spending, planning, and program activity, that does not automatically prove that every dollar was wasted. But it does mean the public is entitled to know whether current efforts are being overwhelmed by new inflows, whether the wrong populations are being targeted with the wrong interventions, whether performance standards are too weak, or whether some funded programs are simply not producing durable outcomes. If those answers cannot be clearly given, then the County should not continue expanding the same framework without major correction.
Independent evaluation should also be part of this conversation. The County should be asking which programs have met their stated goals, which have failed, whether outside audits or reviews have tested provider performance, and whether public reporting is clear enough for residents to understand what has improved and what has not. In the absence of transparent metrics and independent review, the public is left with a cycle of funding announcements, administrative expansion, and worsening street-level conditions. That is not sustainable, and it is not good governance.
Many residents believe the problem is worse now than when the County first created plans, departments, and funded responses intended to address it. Whether every aspect of that perception can be quantified or not, it is a politically and civically significant reality. Public trust erodes when residents see more visible homelessness, more disorder, more unmanaged vehicle habitation, and more ongoing spending without corresponding improvement. At some point, the issue is no longer whether efforts were well intended. The issue becomes whether government is willing to admit when a strategy is not working well enough and to change course.
For that reason, this Committee should use this update not as a routine status report, but as an opportunity to insist on a more serious framework going forward. That framework should include population-specific strategies rather than one-size-fits-all assumptions; better staffing and stronger professional qualifications; realistic acknowledgment of Maui’s local limitations; stronger coordination with Oʻahu and outside providers where needed; consistent public health and safety enforcement; transparent data reporting; independent evaluation; and a clear expectation that continued funding must be justified by measurable progress.
The residents of Maui should not be asked to accept endless deterioration as proof that government is trying hard. Public funding must be tied to public results. If the County lacks the capacity, staffing, expertise, or treatment infrastructure to make this pilot and related homelessness strategies effective, then it should say so honestly, seek the necessary outside support, and stop defending a model that the public increasingly sees as unsuccessful.
This past Monday, I was able to visit the Salvation Army Hilo Temple Corps and their cot program where they have 50 cots for overnight sleeping on a first come first serve basis, they have portable toilets, showers and food truck, they are open to clients from 4p - 7a with lights out at 10p, they employee 3 workers from 3:30p - 11:30p who work with volunteers and other wrap around services and 2 workers from 11:30p - 7:30a; they serve a snack upon opening and dinner between 5:30 - 6:30, showers are limited to 10 minutes and they have kennels for animals to sleep in as well. The operating budget is $1.2M annually. Is that something the County of Maui could do?
Aloha,
In addition to supporting folks who need to sleep in their automobiles, please consider passing a version of this Hanai Kakou Act that would provide emergency housing to all residents who need it.
tinyurl.com/hanai-kakou
Mahalo,
Travis A. Liggett, MS
+1 (808) 291-9934
www.LivingMaui.org
www.instagram.com/livingmauinui
Aloha Chair Sinenci and Members of the Water Authority, Social Services, and Parks Committee:
This written testimony is submitted regarding the update on the pilot project using designated County parking lots for human habitation. Because this item is before the Committee as a status update on the County’s pilot project, this is an appropriate time to ask direct questions about capacity, effectiveness, accountability, and whether the current approach is producing measurable improvement for Maui residents.
At the center of this issue is a basic concern: Maui does not appear to have sufficient local capacity, staffing depth, or specialized professional infrastructure to address the full range of homelessness-related needs now visible in the community. That is not an attack on the intentions of staff or service providers. Many people working in this area may be dedicated and sincere. However, dedication is not the same as capacity, and passion is not the same as measurable success. If public funding continues year after year while the visible crisis continues to worsen, then the County has an obligation to reassess whether the structure, staffing, and operating assumptions behind these efforts are adequate.
One of the most important problems in the public discussion is that homelessness is too often treated as though it were a single category requiring a single policy response. It is not. A person who recently lost housing because of rent burden, job disruption, family breakdown, or disaster-related displacement is not in the same position as a person suffering from severe methamphetamine addiction, serious untreated psychiatric illness, or chronic behavioral instability. Likewise, a working person sleeping in a vehicle is not similarly situated to a person who cannot function independently without intensive clinical intervention. If the County continues to design policy as though these situations are interchangeable, then County programs will continue to produce incomplete and often disappointing results.
For residents who have simply lost housing, the County should be focused on rapid rehousing, short-term rental assistance, employment assistance, transportation support, replacement of identification documents, and other practical interventions that prevent people from falling into chronic homelessness. In many cases, these are the residents most likely to stabilize quickly if help is delivered efficiently and early. It is generally less costly to prevent chronic homelessness than to attempt to reverse it after years of instability.
For working homeless individuals and others living in vehicles, a temporary safe parking model may have some practical value, but only if it is implemented with discipline, urgency, and clear limits. Such a program should include security, restroom access, showers, case management, rules of conduct, reasonable time limits, and a clearly defined exit strategy into permanent housing or another stable placement. A safe parking area should not evolve into a permanent encampment under government management. If the County cannot maintain structure, enforce rules, and move people toward actual housing outcomes, then the program risks becoming a holding pattern rather than a solution.
For individuals suffering from severe substance addiction, housing by itself is not likely to resolve the underlying condition. Treatment capacity matters. If Maui lacks enough inpatient, residential, or clinically appropriate recovery resources, then the County must be honest about that limitation and address it directly through partnerships, contracting, or coordinated off-island support where necessary. The same is true, perhaps even more strongly, for people suffering from severe mental illness. Serious psychiatric disorders often require specialized clinicians, secure treatment environments, continuity of medical care, and at times legal intervention or court-supervised processes. Counties do not always have the ability to provide the full continuum of psychiatric care on their own, and it is reasonable to say openly that Maui appears to have major capacity limitations in this area.
That is why stronger coordination with Oʻahu and other outside systems is necessary. This should not be treated as controversial. If Maui does not have enough psychiatrists, addiction professionals, treatment beds, case management capacity, or other specialized personnel to meet current needs, then insisting on purely local handling does not demonstrate compassion or independence; it demonstrates institutional denial. The County should identify where local capacity ends, where outside expertise is needed, and how those partnerships can be built quickly and transparently.
At the same time, the County must stop treating enforcement and compassion as mutually exclusive concepts. They are not. A functioning community can provide services while also protecting public spaces, public health, and public safety. Illegal dumping, trespassing, vehicle abandonment, sidewalk obstruction, harassment, sanitation violations, and other unlawful conduct should be addressed consistently. Public disorder should not be normalized simply because government is also attempting to provide services. The public has a right to expect both compassion for vulnerable people and accountability for conduct that harms neighborhoods, businesses, parks, sidewalks, and shared spaces.
Most importantly, funding should be tied to results. Public programs should not be insulated from scrutiny merely because the issue is difficult. In fact, the more difficult and expensive the issue becomes, the greater the need for measurable performance standards. Every publicly funded provider or County-managed strategy should be required to report concrete outcomes, including how many people were placed into permanent housing, how many remained housed after six months and twelve months, how many obtained employment where employment was an appropriate goal, how many completed addiction or behavioral health treatment, how many returned to homelessness, and what the cost was per successful long-term placement. Those are not hostile questions. They are the minimum accountability questions taxpayers should ask after years of funding.
If the unsheltered population continues to grow despite years of spending, planning, and program activity, that does not automatically prove that every dollar was wasted. But it does mean the public is entitled to know whether current efforts are being overwhelmed by new inflows, whether the wrong populations are being targeted with the wrong interventions, whether performance standards are too weak, or whether some funded programs are simply not producing durable outcomes. If those answers cannot be clearly given, then the County should not continue expanding the same framework without major correction.
Independent evaluation should also be part of this conversation. The County should be asking which programs have met their stated goals, which have failed, whether outside audits or reviews have tested provider performance, and whether public reporting is clear enough for residents to understand what has improved and what has not. In the absence of transparent metrics and independent review, the public is left with a cycle of funding announcements, administrative expansion, and worsening street-level conditions. That is not sustainable, and it is not good governance.
Many residents believe the problem is worse now than when the County first created plans, departments, and funded responses intended to address it. Whether every aspect of that perception can be quantified or not, it is a politically and civically significant reality. Public trust erodes when residents see more visible homelessness, more disorder, more unmanaged vehicle habitation, and more ongoing spending without corresponding improvement. At some point, the issue is no longer whether efforts were well intended. The issue becomes whether government is willing to admit when a strategy is not working well enough and to change course.
For that reason, this Committee should use this update not as a routine status report, but as an opportunity to insist on a more serious framework going forward. That framework should include population-specific strategies rather than one-size-fits-all assumptions; better staffing and stronger professional qualifications; realistic acknowledgment of Maui’s local limitations; stronger coordination with Oʻahu and outside providers where needed; consistent public health and safety enforcement; transparent data reporting; independent evaluation; and a clear expectation that continued funding must be justified by measurable progress.
The residents of Maui should not be asked to accept endless deterioration as proof that government is trying hard. Public funding must be tied to public results. If the County lacks the capacity, staffing, expertise, or treatment infrastructure to make this pilot and related homelessness strategies effective, then it should say so honestly, seek the necessary outside support, and stop defending a model that the public increasingly sees as unsuccessful.
Mahalo for the opportunity to submit testimony.
Edward Codelia, Maui Resident
This past Monday, I was able to visit the Salvation Army Hilo Temple Corps and their cot program where they have 50 cots for overnight sleeping on a first come first serve basis, they have portable toilets, showers and food truck, they are open to clients from 4p - 7a with lights out at 10p, they employee 3 workers from 3:30p - 11:30p who work with volunteers and other wrap around services and 2 workers from 11:30p - 7:30a; they serve a snack upon opening and dinner between 5:30 - 6:30, showers are limited to 10 minutes and they have kennels for animals to sleep in as well. The operating budget is $1.2M annually. Is that something the County of Maui could do?