You asked: “Why are there so many tent cities and homeless in Hawaii?”. Watch this short YouTube for the answer and check out this Q&A playlist for lots of other answers.
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Vagrants are a harsh reality and eventually will have a harsh resolution…
Vagrants are the reason that adequate assistance falls short for those that need the help… I agree Peter the mental health issue is the responsibility of society and our governing body has to step up… However they are political and therefore destined to drop the ball. we do so many thing right…why not this problem.
The Problem and the key is the vagrant individual… what is needed is an almost militaristic approach… yes a harsh approach… but if they are able bodied and just unwilling to fit in society why let them in it?… time for boot camp… dress them, feed them, work them and teach them …and yes punish them for not following the rules… graduate those that will… those that won’t learn and grow… repeat the above until it takes… a free spirit deserves to be earned and cared for… without a history of learning and persistent effort a free spirit will be lost.
Visualize boot camp…a vagrant boot camps neat clean uniformed cadets… you drive by one of those and there is a teaching moment for your children… today we drive by a vagrant tent city… one that just continues to grow like, a deadly black mold in a wet dark place…one that everyone ignores….
Nothing to teach or learn from TENT CITY… Just a glaring ever present Harsh Heality crying out for a solution… a soft solution does not exist our politicians are glaring failures…the time to put a firm hand to work is obvious.
There is nothing cruel or immoral about a Vagrant Boot camp… society needs to step up and address the needs… and do so in such a way that compels the problem to become the solution…
This not prison… it is boot camp for citizens where they will learn to fit in, learn to appreciate the true value of a “free spirit” and most importantly learn value the responsibility that a free spirit must bare.
Solution:
1. Pass A Law… be a Citizen of Society or of Boot Camp
2. Enforce the Law
My Dad would have said this in far fewer words… they just need a trip to the wood shed till they learn… RIP Dad.
Peter you are spot on the 2/3 of the homeless that are and can be managed… great video
You have no idea how jealous I am watching your videos…
Mahalo George! Glad you like the video and I appreciate your kind words. Tough subject to hit but had to do it.
Brilliant piece regarding the homeless population in Hawaii, Peter. This problem is ubiquitous, especially in warm climates. I think you address the mental illness piece of this puzzle , spot on. Our society needs to help those who can’t help themselves. Wonderful writing and observations. Thank you Peter !
Lisa , in Encinitas
Thank you!
Hey Peter,
I always enjoy listening to your information and watching you drive around. Would you please make it a point to mention where you are driving? What town, where it is on the island and a little more about the view? Thanks my man, and keep up the good work.
Great suggestion! Thank you!
I think you gave a fair and balanced perspective on the situation. I thought it was a good video. I wondered that myself when I was last there, why whole cities of tents? I thought maybe because the weather is so good there, the people just come and stay, but can’t afford housing. It’s a difficult situation without an easy solution because you don’t want to pull assistance from those who need it or from those who are unable to care for themselves but you don’t want to promote people taking advantage of assistance. It’s hard to discern who is who. Maybe have a time limit on how long assistance is provided unless the individual can prove they have a mental or physical disability that prevents self-sufficiency? For those who are able provide assistance for a set period of time and also require: resume writing, interview skills training, access to professional clothing and require job placement and training program participation. For those who don’t participate, funding will cease. (Just an idea?)
Mahalo Jojo for your comments and ideas!
I live way north in upstate NY. I work in a field where I come across people who have come out of homeless shelters. We get the ones who fell on hard times and a case worker helping them with some temporary government assistance makes all the difference. They get stabilized in a home and do well. The second group are the mentally ill. They fit into two categories. Those who get placed in an apartment, get the needed meds & other resources. They’re fine as long as they are monitored and receive consistent assistance. The second mentally ill group wind up back on the street due to the following. Since they are over seventeen, no one can force them to do anything unless they commit a crime. (You can thank all the people who wrongly put their wife or children in a mental hospital in the past…) This second group will not stay on their meds, not keep a consistent home, so they will not be stabilized. Unless our society does more to help them, they will become prey & die in the streets or harm, murder someone else and wind up in prison. I don’t have much experience with vagrants. There’s also a group of homeless people who don’t seem to have mental illness. They just seem to be adults who never grew up and who are very uncooperative. They do what they feel like doing and create all kinds of bad drama where ever they live. (Which is always temporary because they’re always getting evicted). This gives the others coming out of the shelters and off the streets a bad name. I do believe they need a special program and a court mandate to comply with it. Sorry for the rant…My heart also goes out for the ones who are mentally ill and incapable of helping themselves.
lol did you watch the video?
On the issue of “vagrants” I remember back in the days I was at the City Council that there was a move to make vagrancy illegal. It got shot down because of the way the current State Constitution allows for the Law of the Splintered Paddle be the rule of law when it comes to sleeping on the streets and such. While it was nice in the way way past to have this, considering that we are talking about pre- and post-discovery time frames, the “law” now becomes a convenient killer of any provisions regarding addressing vagrants. I personally think that the state, now in the 21st century, needs to address the minimization or elimination of the Law of the Splintered Paddle for the sake of addressing vagrants.
Mahalo Stan for the history. I forgot all about the Splintered Paddle history and how that plays into what we have today. Do you now offhand what Constitution Article refers to that?
Specifically it is in Hawaii Constitution, Article IX, Section 10, under “Public Safety” Specifically, it reads:
PUBLIC SAFETY
Section 10. The law of the splintered paddle, mamala-hoe kanawai, decreed by Kamehameha I–Let every elderly person, woman and child lie by the roadside in safety–shall be a unique and living symbol of the State’s concern for public safety.
The State shall have the power to provide for the safety of the people from crimes against persons and property. [Add Const Con 1978 and election Nov 7, 1978]
Wherever you find liberals you will see more homeless. I live in California where like Hawaii the homeless population is huge. They are encouraged to come and enabled while here. Human feces all over our parks. We used to call them bums but liberals have become the people of euphemisms.
Time to get real and enforce our vagrancy laws instead of feeling guilty.
Great Idea, Do know where we can put them? I hope that you can come up with something.
Always a bit of liberal bashing from some wise person. Interestingly, though I liked him well enough, it was Reagan’s cost cutting that ended the institutions that housed the troubled homeless. I watched their number grow even since that Reagan pop when I began to see homelessness everywhere. Now you’re probably right about liberal concern for unjust incarceration, but it’s the cheapskate quality of most on the right that costs us as a society by not being willing to pitch in for teachers, programs, etc. Yes, everyone loves a tax cut, and how nice to be able to blame someone else for our own shortsightedness.
Personally, I think there should be options for first responders to handle putting a troubled person into an evaluation involuntarily, with protections of course.
I’ve begun to think that the more financial support given to people the less effort goes into being self-sufficient. Solving problems along with job skills, resume writing, and helping to bring people into a level where they can take care of their family. I am in agreement with you on the way our system doesn’t work. What do you think of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ? I’m not sure she’s moving in the right direction. Note: Just my opinion ˜ºï¸
Herein lies the problem, blame solves nothing and resolves no issues. Is is only by we who live in Hawaii working together that aloha will become more than an empty meaningless word.
Agreed!
Thank you for sharing your observations! Do you think there is more of a homeless problem in Hawaii than any other place? Is there more homeless in Hawaii made up people that want to live “off the grid”? I have heard stories of people that live on the Na Pali coast in the wilderness.
I don’t have the data to know how Hawaii’s homeless problem compares to the others. There are many people who live off the grid on the Big Island but they have homes and so not in the same category.
Going into Hawaii was the biggest mistake. Hawaiians lost their native land to greed and tourism. Now it’s too expensive. Good ole America. Go into a land and take it over and then wonder why there are so many problems. Should have never happened. I have friends there that are natives and this is what they tell me.
You are dead on it in stating the situation. How we come out of it, there is the rub that is to politically incorrect to be addressed until it becomes raw and sometimes not even then.
Thanks! The fact that I really had to hold my breath before stating the obvious is quite telling.
OH its telling.