HONOLULU (KHON2) — Homelessness continues to be a top priority on Oahu, and the City and County of Honolulu is looking for someone to lead their efforts in the role of homeless coordinator.
Get Hawaii’s latest morning news delivered to your inbox, sign up for News 2 You
“I think that it really is an execution job. So the person will be inside the Department of Community Services. We’ll put a team in place with them, and their real job is to take our strategy and execute it on the streets,” said Anton Krucky, the Director of the Department of Community Services. “I think that last year was just a monumental year for the strategies that we did. So as complex as homelessness is, really, the strategies break down to just two items that you’re really trying to do, and then all the activities funnel into those two pieces of the strategy. The first part is to really do everything creatively you can do to get a person on the street to be willing to accept systems and services that we offer. The second thing is we constantly analyze our resources to service those decisions.”
Earlier this week during his State of the State ceremony Governor Josh Green talked about the state and city collaborating to come up with solutions with Hawaii’s counties.
Over 100 out-of-state homeless in Hawaii sent back to mainland families
“The way the mayor and the governor have gotten along has really enabled us to do some fantastic things. With the installation of the Kauhales, the state has put almost 200 of these units in play in the last year. In the city, we’ve offered spaces and beds, and the state has helped us fund those,” Krucky said. “We give the construction, they give the services. We put more than 500 units in the street. So all of that combined is, I think we’re doing the counting now over 1,500 services rendered last year.”
There is still a long road ahead in fighting homelessness in the islands. One of the biggest issues is the severely mentally ill who cannot seek help themselves, and the difficulty in getting mandated assistance.
Find more Hawaii, Oahu, Maui and Kauai news here
“When I came into this position 4 years ago, housing was the only solution,” Krucky said. “And, really, as you do market segmentation and you look at the populations of folks that you don’t wanna deal with, housing won’t work for everyone. And we’re finding there’s a large component of medical services that are needed. And because of that, we’ve opened medical respites to kinda deal with that situation where someone goes to the ER and they’re immediately released, where we can work with them for a few months and move them into the next step.”