Mayor blasted over homeless - Hawaii News - Staradvertiser.com
You clearly have got to love this article, and a lot of the responses to it. If the ridiculous could be any more sublime.
So, I f you haven't guessed yet, as I write on this topic and advocate for fair and equitable housing ad nauseum and no one really listens to me, I will of course be repeating myself.
I have recently met some people, who are responsible hard working people. One is a mom with three kids. The other is a professional woman. Both have degrees. Both are articulate, intelligent, have no vices, such as drinking, drugs, or questionable behavior, and no mental illnesses. They are perfectly deserving of a decent job and decent housing.
However, neither can find that. They are houseless not homeless. They are part of the much larger numbers of people that do not have a tent parked at the beach. They stay with friends, or live in other peoples back yards, wherever they can go. The word has gone out about a 500 dollar dine for sleeping oin your car, and the rousting of people from beaches. People are clearly terrified. No one wants to step forward. People do not even tell other people that they are actually homeless.
Many poeple on o0ur island, get up get dressed, get their kids off to school, go to work, pick up their kids, and then its a struggle to get through the night. It is more expensive to be on the street. You cant always cook for yourself, you use more gas in your car, and getting a hot shower can also be a problem.
(f you are working, shelter hours here on Kauai are a nightmare. You have to check in by 4 pm. Many cant go there, because of the geographical location of the shelter, being in Lihue. The gas money alone, if you are trying to save up for a rental is hard if you are working in Kapaa, the North Shore, or the South Side. The shelter here is very good. However we need more very low income housing. And quick.
On Oahu, its an epidemic proportions. I know many families there that are homeless. I guess on Oahu there must be an influx of the severely mentally ill, and druggies and others, but i also know there are a significant number of houseless, and families.
The problem is there is no permanent housing here that they can afford. The solution, accodording to some law makers, is to push out existing families out of public housing that have been living their in their opinion for too long, and have extended family members living with them.
This is their solution. Kick out one group of people, who have been following the rules and paying their rents for years, and make them homeless, so that these other homeless can get into housing, and off the street.
WOW. Now THERE is an intelligent solution!~! NOT!!
That solution woujld also cause a flurry of lawsuits. Forget flurry. Try avalanche Can anyone say the words "unconstitutional?" If anyone else had been renting in the private sector, and been a longstanding teneat, would we say to them, "Hey you have been paying your rent and following the rules here long enough!. Its time to get on with your life and get another rental you lazy worthless bum!". Would we say that? Nope.
However, that is exactly what some state legislators are planning come January. Some of them think, rather insanely, that public housing residents are somehow now a worse scurge against hum,anity than the homeless they often treat like wild, untamed animals. Now its the public housing residents that are the terrible, lazy bums. Even though most families are law abiding, pay their rents and follow the rules. What sort of a farce of a government says "Hey lets kick out the public housing residents, so we can stuff these guys in there and put those guys out on the street."
A lot of public housing residents work, and have children. If you evict public housing residents, arbitrarily, after deciding how many years is "too long" to live in public housing, which is by the way labeled as "permanent housing", and NOT as a "temporary housing, or shelter", then you are essentially putting a lot of working class and the working poor on the beaches. Which they are not allowed to stay at. Which will put them back in a homeless shelter. So they can wait to get back into public housing.
Yeah thats a really good solution. makes a hell of a lot of sense. NOT.
The only solution, is to do a few things:
1. Residency policy for social services.
2, Immediately construct more low and extremely low housing facilities.
3. Fix up the units that are empty all over public housing, and get them occupied.
4. Rent control., and new laws to cap what people can charge for rental units in this state, based on 30 percent income.
5. NEWw laws that state that if you re coming here to do business and hire employees, then you m,ust put into a worker housing fund to provide low uiincoime and extreme low income housing in this state. (Oh people will scream about that one!) I don't care.
If I was in government, these are the steps I would take.
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