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The Office of Housing and Community Development Impact Report on Homelessness - May 2023 to March 2024
Is There Progress in Addressing Homelessness? - On March 23, 2022, the County of Hawaiʻi enacted Ordinance 22-26, allocating 75% of Residential Tier Two property tax revenues (taxing owners who own 2 or more properties) for five fiscal years to address homelessness and enhance housing solutions. The recent OHCD Impact Report highlights the collective efforts of local agencies and organizations working to address homelessness with this funding. The resulting numbers show:
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A total count of 2,399 individuals without stable housing from May 2023 to February 2024 (!,593 identified as homeless + 806 people identified as unstably housed.)
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That from the effort to assist 2,399 individuals, only 192 people received stable housing.
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That the $17 million in total funds allocated to homeless organizations' projects from the time period of July 2022 to December 2024 (30 months), is expected to yield fewer than 400 individuals into stable housing.
Below is the list of funded social service organizations and their projects that were selected by the Office of Housing and Community Development to meet the goal of decreasing the homeless count in our community, and the dollar figure that each organization received.
How many people did each organization project stably house with the individual funding? Notably absent is the success rate of each organization, leaving questions about the effectiveness of these individual projects. How many people did each project stably house with the individual funding?
WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW?
NOTE: Previous to this $9.7 million, another $7.58 million in grant funding was awarded in Fiscal year 2022-2023 to 13 non-profits through County Resolution 61-23. totaling
$17 million disbursed by the Office of Housing and Community Development over the time period from July 2022 to December 2024. With $17 million invested in homeless initiatives, less than 400 people were stably housed. Not a big return on investment.
Why isn't the homeless count decreasing?
The majority of awardee projects selected are not those inherently designed to be pathways into immediate housing placements - the projects primarily focus on services. Individuals receive services, yet remain in the same homeless status. Though these services are deemed "compassionate", the clients return to sleeping on hard ground, It's the revolving door of services, with no offer of a "roof over one's head." This kind of decision-making is not in alignment with OHCD's own purpose and goal to "ensure that homelessness is rare, brief, and non-reoccurring. Furthermore, according to their Strategic Roadmap plan, the proposed affordable housing projects can take up to 3 to 5 years to complete. In the interim, without the selection of more innovative projects specifically geared toward immediate long-term housing placements, the homeless count will significantly increase year after year on the Big Island, Hawaii. And so will the crime rate.
At this point, there's a need for re-evaluation of the Strategic Roadmap's "priority" tasks as determined by the initial focus group, and their correlation to the selection of awardee projects and their effectiveness. This is critical to ensure that the initial goal to decrease homelessness in our community is not set aside or forgotten.