Hawaii's homeless law fuels tension - The Boston Globe

Hawaii's homeless law fuels tension - The Boston Globe

This article was written in 2004, citing a growing trend for four years, which takes the date back to 2000, when the homeless crisis first started to peak. Today it is worse then ever, with homeless people literally terrified of going into the shelter system, because they are afraid of the rules, which can be extremely arbitrary. The prison like conditions, extremely strict rules in particular in regards to childrens behavior, and intimidation is really what is keeping people out of shelter. other fears are losing jobs because of lack of childcare, due to new cuts in childcare subsidies which are slowly dwindling down to nothing leaving working homeless without options for childcare. Unless shelters offer full childcare at all hours of the day, since many parents work at night due to tourism industry jobs which are frequently in the evening and at night, they lose what jobs they have. This will of course cause their credit ratings to go down, which will then keep them out of public housing if new rules and regulations are. This couples with planned DHS office closures are an absolute nightmare scenario. We have done nothing but slide backwards in this state with our housing situation. These are people who are used to having land and room, but it has been ripped away from them and their families, jobs have not kept pace with the living expenses and rates are still too high, and housing is still too scarce.

PLEASE ATTEND THE LEGISLATIVE HEARING ON FRIDAY MARCH 19 STARTING AT 5 PM at the KCC Cafeteria, press conference before the hearing please come. ALOHA