Programs that depend on state money to continue serving Hawaii’s homeless rallied together Monday to send a message to lawmakers. 

Tuesday, April 2nd 2019, 12:47 PM HST by KITV Web Staff

It’s a crisis that isn’t going away.

“We can’t keep talking about it, we have to do something about it,” said Connie Mitchell, Chair of Partners in Care/Executive Director at IHS. 

Programs that depend on state money to continue serving Hawaii’s homeless rallied together Monday to send a message to lawmakers.

“We seem to care more for stray dogs then we do for homeless people,” Marya Grambs of the Drug Police Forum of Hawaii said.

Nonprofits say it can be difficult to work with homeless long term if they’re constantly worried about not being able to sustain themselves the next year.

They’re asking to be included in the State’s budget rather than have to fend for themselves in separate bills.

“Once we move them into housing as the provider we need the assurance that we are not going to put families back on the street, that we are not going to put people with disabilities back on the street,” Brandee Menino of Bridging the Gap Hawaii said. 

As the 2019 legislative sessions starts to wind down, service providers are hoping the legislature will continue to not just fund them but keep finding funding for developers to build more affordable housing.

“There’s 500-plus-thousand homes on this island, at 2-percent growth, we’ve got to build 10,000 homes per year just to keep up with demand and we don’t even do a thousand homes per year so you think about that supply and demand imbalance right there,” Craig Watase of Mark Development said. 

 

Read the news article and watch the video direct through KITV here.