Homelessness on the neighbor islands increased from last year to this year, according to the annual Point in Time Count released last week.
It's a one-day survey, but it informs nonprofits on mitigation and prevention in the future.
"When you use a Point in Time Count, it's difficult because it's only a one-day snapshot. But the way you can use it is to you can compare the trends over the years," Maude Cummings, executive director of Family Life Center on Maui, said last week. She’s the past Chair of Bridging the Gap, which conducts the count.
The annual Point in Time Count showed a 9% increase in homelessness for neighbor islands, which is about 170 new people on the streets.
The PIT data is combined with the Homeless Management Information System, which is a visual data center for trends.
"We develop dashboards, we track census counts, (track) how many people are in the shelter, how long people are homeless, for the length of stay in any of our programs, whether it's outreach, or emergency shelter, transitional shelter, and then the goal is to use that data to inform our decisions moving forward," Cummings said.
The PIT tracks those who are sheltered and unsheltered but still classify as homeless. Kauaʻi saw a 10% increase in overall homelessness, and Hawaiʻi Island saw a 20% increase.
But the survey did see fewer families experiencing homelessness across the neighbor islands, Paul Normann, executive director of Neighborhood Place of Puna, pointed out.
For the state to see a significant improvement, he said the state needs to invest in mitigation and prevention.
"We really need to be working on a robust prevention services, right?" Normann said. "So to try and prevent as many individuals and families from falling in homelessness because once they get on the street, it's just harder, everything is harder and it's more expensive."
Maui was the only neighbor island that saw a net decrease in homelessness, according to the count. Cummings attributes some of the decrease to affordable housing coming online. But while county and state officials have made affordable housing a priority, construction takes time.
"That's how we were able to move a lot of people into housing because housing was made available at the same time, and that's one of the biggest things I think that we advocate for, and we push for, is creation of those kinds of housing," Cummings said. "It doesn't have to be dedicated to homeless individuals. It just has to be affordable."
