the meeting of the housing human services and transportation committee we're now come to order it is nine or four a m on tuesday october eleventh twenty sixteenth before we begin may i please request that we all turn off or silence our cell phones or other noisemaking devices at this time i'd like to introduce our committee voting members our committee vice chair gladys member bob carroll council member don guzmn and council member mike victory no i'd like at this time to introduce our administration representatives director of parks and recreation also with us today is a community officer work as well as cummings from the  housing alliance actually from family support center in the gallery we have our director of housing and human concerns also with the city as our committee secretary pauline martins and our legislative analyst michelle yoshimura thank you for all of your work members before we started on with public g shark traill and falcon patrol they're here this morning to observe our committee meeting and it's part of their requirements to fulfill their citizenship thank you and before you know it you'll be registered to vote members we have one item on the agenda today so we're going to start with public testimony i'll check with there's no testimony testifiers before us from the chamber i'm going to check with our district offices our alumni district is unavailable for today's meeting so we'll start with the hama district  our agenda item to day is homelessness in my we county eighty eight dash three the committee is in receipt of county communication sixteen dash one three one from myself relating to the matter of homelessness in county the committee may receive an update of the homeless population in maui county the impact of the closure of kandahar beach par campsite the impact of homelessness to parks and port facilities and the status of homeless program approved and a fiscal year twenty seventeen budget the committee may also consider a filing of county communication sixteen dash one three one and other related action and before you go any further like to welcome consummate ember bob carroll thank you for being  at this time i'm going to comments founder department of housing and human concerns as well as from the department of parks and recreation good morning council members my name is jan she she and the deputy director of department of housing and human concerns this morning i am here to continue the ongoing discussions on homelessness as we have come to know homelessness is a huge concern an issue that is truly that it truly takes a whole community to get involved and assist with solutions may i say that we are faced with a broken system that requires much more case management facilities outreach and especially the understanding of the needs of the homeless many of the homeless have severe mental health issues and as we saw last week in chair victor reno's policy and intergovernmental affairs meeting a testifier was threatened by a homeless man who i later found out has  e and escalating mental health problems yes he is a known homeless man who needs case management for his meds but only can receive three hours per month for services  i did see a month but only can so i take off my hat to the testifier especially since she also made a police report of the incident to his sister molly police department gather those much needed statistics on record that is so important we have today the community police officer that daily tackles the homeless and i do see the need to increase their division as  its efforts go way beyond their duties they don't most of the homeless by name they gather the shopping carts they even assisted in the efforts they do a lot of the cleanup to the understand and deal with the homeless in a very compassionate manner the department is grateful to the council for the homeless division that will be made up of a quarter nater and a specialist we are very close in getting those positions approved by our department of personnel services as they are finalizing the class specifications and job descriptions with other municipalities the part is also very appreciative of the budget increase for our homeless program that will assist in the outreach efforts to get our homeless how and it is much more than housing the homeless it also goes with the many services that each homeless person family and youth will need in case management efforts to get them back into society i want to think maad coming executive director of family life center for staff that does amazing outreach effort and the twenty four seven care for the homeless i thank you maad for being here today thank you chair carvel over the opportunity for the public to better understand the homeless and how the mayor and the other county departments are collaborating collaborating with the service providers to minimize the increasing concerns of the homeless thank you thank you members will receive comments from our representatives and administration before we open up the floor for mark questions or or discussion department of parks and recreation morning chair  members still smarting that this morning's meeting we're here just to represent the parks department peace with the homeless situation as we're all aware our park system has become a homeless shelter and has been affected with the community aspect where limited resources that we already have through parks having this issue at park aladdin's has become strenuous within the department to keep it clean safe and in this for the community to use and enjoy peacefully great examples of that in the area that we all solutions but having the community realize that the parks department is not a housing and who we concerns are homeless shelter that would has become so we could answer any questions on behalf of the parks department today thank you  this time would like to hear from my chair is coming his chair of the homeless alliance and executive director of family life center do our compassionate responses because prior to any time that mark is going to be clear about the homeless service providers are notified and notices passed out to individuals who are in the parks and we go out prior we're not part of it for cement so we go out to any activity to remove people and offer them services we try to identify who is there we try to do a mapping we actually pull down a google map and we identify how many people out there where they're at what the campsites look like what their family configuration is especially if there are any children  offer services offered to transport people we work with the community policing officers and frequently get calls from the community police to ask about certain areas and we will go out in check it out we have worked together with the parks department in one instance in one of the parks the rangers were having difficulty moving people out because it was one elderly  filipino man there was seventy nine that felt like he kept to keep the place clean it was ok for him to stay there and so it was difficult to move everybody out without moving this one man out so we did work with the polic officers and i went down there with the researchers and convinced the individual to come with us and fortunately a unit had opened up in one of the apartments that we manage and own and we were able to house him there we did not have any resource for paying his rent we looked for resources but he was there in the parents for five months without paying any rent and he then he passed away during that time that he was housed my staff really because he did not have any family for support staff essentially became his taking him to doctor's appointments taking him food shopping in fact the community because i mean would be in emergency contact community community would call us and say your grandpa is here can someone  come and get him so there was a coordinated effort between the parks and the community policing officers in ice so we try to use whatever available resources we have we have an emergency shelter that can house up to fifty one of the difficulties is that our emergency shelter consists of two large areas one for males and one for females families or couples often do not want to be separated so they don't want to come into the shelter we examine and we examine our services on a regular basis to identify why we have a shelter why aren't people coming in what's the reason is there something we need to change is there a different way we need to operate and so we're always looking at those things our goal is to end homelessness there may be other than grahams out there there may be feeding programs to distribute food and other things such as hygiene items but that is not our goal our goal is to end homelessness so there's a difference in some way some of the services they may serve people who are homeless but the goal may not be  patrol responds to cases as far as when you call them out are now community policing is more of a long term problems that we have a certain areas so i'm just here to answer this question thank you thank you for the work that you do thank you members i will open up the floor for any questions or comments is my son thank you thank you very much chair and thank you for the resources for being here this morning i have a question for mr wall work how large is the group that you work with you mentioned you know we know you're here but how many of you are there correct so the the whole process of developing a new division had to come with looking at job spec you came with class specific asians and job descriptions as as also department of personnel services needed to go out to the other municipalities to find out the other job descriptions in class specs and it's just about done so we should be hearing any minute now from d p s so based on our normal timing when we think we're going to see some people hired good question that's a very good question yes and so once whence a position sir are formally in our system then the recruitment will begin and that will be that may take up to i don't even want to guess but hopefully by the beginning of the year we should happen housing on this division thank you very much you know i know that it's a real problem i've sat here for ten years listening to this recruitment process which drives me crazy because you know we funded and then we go through all this and we wait and wait and wait and we have people that want jobs and we have jobs that need to be done but we're caught up in paperwork which to me makes no sense but anywhere near i'm not going to be able to change that obviously but the other thing i was really curious was for maad are huge and if you know do we have waiting lists at the shelters that we have like great now the our family lives centers shelter can accommodate fifteen men and thirty five women and children the male shelter is generally always for if it is four we will do a lottery that night and pull names and the first fifteen sometimes we have an outside courtyard area that is  covered if it's raining we will allow more than fifteen with the understanding that we don't have the accommodations that we would normally have for more than fifteen but we will allow up to can you tell us about the others thank you so i know that kali ocular they do have their permanent housing for their low income housing rental units but then on the other side with their transitional emergency shelter they have about there is about i want to say ninety units and this would also include the west side the west maui resource center in la hina my understanding is there is a wait list but there are usually is emergency beds available but as far as dated july twenty seventh two thousand and sixteen for item number three and four they requested an extension to august third did you ever get any response back from that because those are really good question has responded yes council member couch i just wanted to first of all apologize we did we did not respond to that but i think it came with the just the amount of information that we needed to gather as well as the changing initiative that initially was brought up by our mare and when it was time to start looking at the different structures or many units or many houses that we were supposed to gather it got quite intense and i know that the director was really working hard in getting those numbers and trying to get figures but it just kept getting the vendors were getting different types of information to was wasn't giving information to us and so basically worst i guess we're still searching but we do apologize for not giving you that information day thank you thank you miss cummings thank you for being here you know you said you had a certain amount for women and children and only fifteen for men what is it physical size of the building or your land space or what is the limitation why do you have those numbers it was a physical size of the building so we have two areas one area downstairs and that is where the men are and that that is a small area it's about a thousand square feet upstairs we have about four thousand square feet so we just that's how it  is there any possibility if if that's where your issue is that you the men's side is always overflowing or mostly overflowing to partition off the up stairs to have a portion for a little bit more for the m figure out different configurations how it would work in terms of bathrooms in the location of the bathrooms and as far as oversight we have a female monitor and a male monitor that work as long as the shelters open and so there's a difficulty if we have a have to add additional staff and so at this point we and we have considered even maybe possibly putting the man upstairs putting the women downstairs but generally the women are the ones with the children and the downstairs area is also used dual duty for and that's also the eating area so we have the females and children eat first they come in homework and getting to bed that kind of thing and by the way thank you for what you guys do you know you at least help alleviate some of the problem and it's very important that the work that you do you did ask what you may want what can you change or what not it's my understanding that you don't allow people on drugs and alcohol issues in there or do you know we are low barrier shelter in some areas it's considered a damp shelter which is you don't have to be clean and sober you can be actively using can come is the latest housing first housing first is not just about permanent housing it is also about all the housing services that are offered that we need to offer low barrier because we need to get people and see what we can do to help them so frequently a large population about fifty percent of our population has a mental health issue probably another twenty five percent has  addiction substance abuse issues so it is quite an intense time for the monitor because people do come in drunk but they have to be peaceable if they are not in they will be asked to leave had hoped for better news this morning but i understand the difficulty of collecting and putting forth the smart assessment of information and data but i hope the agencies can perform for the department because it will impact how we view grants make sure let me tell you one thing i am pfeifer an interesting is how much support does the county of my receive from the state and federal court regarding mental health because that is not a county function it's a state of hawaii function by state constitution and state law so i would like to ask what they thought of support can you receive or have received regarding programs and funding that is their responsibility you don't thank you chair thank you for that question because i think in my initial in my initial opening i did mention how we have such a broken system and i don't want one to say this in a very negative way but we don't have the the greatest support when it comes to the mental health we have mental health america does a great job in trying to educate our our community we do have mental health who does have outreach here and they have federal they have federal and state funding as well as county funding as far as other mental health or this from the state itself from our local state this is it's very it's unfortunate that there is minimal help out there and as we see the mental health issues grow and most of it is mental health issues out in the streets in the homeless population they don't get the service that they really need and sometimes i think model can attest to some of the reactions that they get when they go out and find that they need someone who can help them with a person with mental issues and help is very rare so we're in the current process is a clear screen where it is diagnosed to be  mental health issue sit down at the cell block window police department responded and arrest as a suspect and then he comes on the county's dollars or is a star in the field during an assessment of the for an assessment it is a mental health issue versus a issue of choice so when you have i think most of the intakes once they're  done once they're done with or finished with an intake and a case manager is assigned to them and that's where the process usually begins and i may want to defer to madhu as she sees  women the reasons we encourage people to come into our shelter is we can do a better assessment to once you're in a shelter we do several things one is we have a certified substance abuse counselor that does a substance abuse screening we also do a mental health review we don't have any we don't offer any therapeutic services and we work with mental health couper to refer those people that either have had mental services in the past and i'm no longer connected or ones that exist either exhibit behavior or tell us itself report they tell us what they're experiencing and we try to get them an appointment out in the field the same thing we try to get them appointment and it is difficult though because it depends on what kind of insurance they have sometimes they don't have insurance so then we have to go through the process of getting them in road for medicaid to make sure that they get the services they need i also want to say that i i do sit on the  system is all coordinating together and i must say that i have advocated for badgered question and done everything i can because i see that the mental health services are not adequate they're far inadequate there's probably some legislation that needs to happen and because you know when the laws were changed and people were no longer we did not the process to get into long term treatment such as a state facility income you know when when those laws changed in was felt that people would be able to function better in the community and the services in the community well it hasn't happened the services haven't kept up with the need and so now we have a whole population of people who need services that you cannot make them participate and help the state do their job as i understand it well to the state constitution regarding the health and safety of our people especially to indigenous people of this lands i concerns me greatly because our county can assist us but it's not for us to take over their jobs so one thing i would like to ask since we have missed or work there is a concern on the flip side of the issue about the protection of the greater community and the needs of the greater community to feel safe and secure and to be able to go to their parks they're streets without feeling endangerment about being threatened or choose to deny use of their own public assets can you give us some comment about the flip side of how we did the primaries dealing with trying to britax the greater community what kind of challenges have you found in your experience with someone who challenges are that we can't keep them on a place if it's during normal dark hours so again it's a case by case in the levels of confinement or this officers will will go through a series of questions if anything as far as injuries or mental health come up when we are mandated to take went to the hospital and on whether the i believe so because they're there in our custody until the courts take over whether they let him go or are they going to the mall and triple c then it becomes a state issue well i would say trained in informed of how to deal with difficult situations because i still even if you have a mental problem that's nice cues for breaking the law to me we can be compassionate difficult subject cherice to be given or obama to answer question as far as our park rangers are trained might be for the most part when it comes to parks and recreation those are probably be our most trained  aspect of parks but as far as our park caretaker staff as far as formal training i have to say no no one is formally trained to deal with the homeless situation that we currently have i think a lot of it is through just learning experiences that they deal with we have a lot of regulars at the park that our staff is aware of and have communications with but to actually see that they were trained to deal with homeless know the answer would be no physical  may be using the wrong term search or maybe be informed of giving informed information you know if this is a person is a are you aware we don't we have this program you might cummings for some support or whatnot but just general information it may be the individual if the person was in for him he makes them better choices or be referred to a place where appropriate support and then as well if it's something that's really an emergency it's to call nine one one the biggest challenge we have again is you know parks be in the open space so they're all there and i think with the most recent situation we have a come on it's become humane concerns do we have a sense of how many chooses to be homeless how many for unforseen circumstances has no choice for homeless and i know there's many different things al dealing with working homeless just like them are there is working homeless i know a county employee that works for tie lives in a car full time a company employee cannot make the rent as a single assessment or is there a need for this assessment to be done because i think we need to be aware that home is not just what you see on public areas chair  council member who come up for that question and it is a huge number unfortunately if we take it case by case i know for example to sought some shelter and housing and the rests chose not to so we're looking at maybe at least eighty percent ninety percent it's a high number that choose not to and it's interesting that you mention about the working homeless because i've encountered many working homeless as i go through the bush's meet with homeless people that you're right they can't they choose to be out there working and and it's not even not being able to pay our rent it's just that they choose to live that lifestyle so the number is quite high and again i'm very happy to call upon mog because she may have more of those statistics as well because when we went to the river mouth many of them went back to their families not many were housed although there was a couple or two that were able to be housed we talked  harbor that was recently reached and there is quite a bit out there that are new homeless and that are do not choose to be homes as well thank you  twenty years ago an s m s did a phone survey to identify people who were overcrowded and in those kinds of living situations where they are about to be homeless but i don't believe there any recent studies that have been conducted one of our difficulties always is what we call travellers they're here for takes perience the world our goal is to end homelessness so if they do not want to participate in a plan of care says i will work towards a goal with you towards homelessness then we see the in you are not eligible for  because we can be incredibly busy but remarkably effective and that's all we do and so our goal is to end homelessness so sometimes this means that we have to we don't pick and choose but it's up to the individual we there's a there's a list of things that we're in now a questionnaire that we give that identifies all the things that we will work towards together in about every sentences and the but we do not want to create a system where people here are just good and then you can get a free ticket home we absolutely do not want that system to be created so the program requires that you pay half and that we contact wherever it is home is we will call that person we will make sure that they are going to house you not just temporarily but they're going to provide for your care you can live there on a permanent basis would probably send about twenty five people returned to home we probably had about one hundred inquiries people who just want to travel here and then find themselves stranded and want to return home but they return to homelessness we are not returning him but he didn't want to return and so we don't force anybody to do that of course but after nine months of being in the rain you finally got tired of being called and agreed and in that case we had to actually send someone to accompany him because of medical issues he could not travel on his own so we look at all possibilities is there someplace you can go back to maybe there are sometimes family members been looking for people that want them home and so we try to make that connection but it's still to end homelessness this is not just a trip so we try to use those  of resources there are other people that their current addictions find it difficult to live with structure that is probably one of the main reason why people don't come into  shelter is because a structure and after you've been homeless for four or five years it's difficult even if you are or one rule is you have to be peaceable we don't have many other rules besides that that is also difficult if you have a mental health issue living with fifteen other people and also may have issues is difficult some people cannot be in an enclosed space lot of other reasons why people don't come into the emergency shelter but we find that a good start to getting a good assessment one of the things we're moving towards as a system is developing a coordinated assessment and so that we can their resources to the right people some people just need a light touch some people need intense care so some of us receive permanent supportive housing funds so we can pay for rent  so that if i have say thirty slots that are funded by heard for people with severe and persistent mental illness or disability that those are not those do not belong to me they belong to the community so with the coordinated entry system whatever access point the person comes in we will develop a system to rate them and then the next opening say that i have in my program   roughly twenty three point nine percent are twenty four percent of those that are homeless have only lived in a hole for twelve months or less what is the percentage here and for those homeless i have lived here twelve months unless i don't have the report with me but i would say that is about the same it's about twenty percent so the overall state is twenty four percent and work twenty percent here yes you know i just wanted to let me also ask the department whether the i know there's when i was practicing law and institutionalized people and the theory back then was to do more outpatient so there was a state state against the legislation cut the funding for a lot of the institutions and so it made it more difficult when when you were signed by the corps to handle these type of cases i believe my case lasted about eighteen months but my client was arrested just on a pity misdemeanor and to prevent her from going to jail or that person from going to jail which was only thirty days we put over her head the ability to work with social workers at the intake in a lot of these i believe the mental illness they can be resolved by medication and a social worker i know that we periodic we had to bring her back into court and make sure that she was going to the doctor  eventually got her housing in and then eventually she went off to take classes and very stabilized but it took about eighteen months and this was working with the social workers to get them into court i mean this is a long process i just feel that just and that's just one individual being i guess not forced into it but so happened was picked up by m p did the intake and was then assigned by the judge to add to health calendar i can even imagine those who are not in the vault to you know i don't think we would have ever seen that type of person in the system had it not been for the arrest but i can sympathize with those who don't want to voluntarily go into that type of system but is this still the same process as are still like a three panel decision for institutionalization and it's very there's a lot of red tape that goes along with just working with a one individual is it still the same process it is still the same process unfortunately you can't make anybody take medication we see people on the time that we believe would benefit from medication we can enforce that quite often that is the route that what we believe is although the punitive route is not the route that is i believe is the best way sometimes it is the only way that a person receives the treatment that they need and so we have unfortunately had to watch people get arrested but the outcome is where they do get the treatment that they need in unfortunately that's the way the laws are i think it's you know church got to be a collaborative effort because i could easily you know convince that person to just take the jail time but to to work with the social workers to make sure that this person or these individuals go through the system it was a such a huge transformation from the time that i had initially taken that case and met with that person  was grungy you know wasn't well kept at all and living there was living in the parking lot and then at the end of the case eighteen months later very groomed you know had taken part time classes by that time and medication and the ability to see physicians on a monthly or weekly basis is key i mean there's a lot of them that are you know just just in that situation or if they had the and yes i think i'm trying to figure out how this works and you know we had a meeting here the other day we were talking about the results from the temporary investigative group  in regards to how we can get affordable housing and it was repeated over and over and over that we need to deal with the homeless issues first because it's immediate and we have to do with it right away so what you folks are doing is very important and first of all i want to thank every single one of you for this art work i know it's difficult it's it's not easy work and sometimes you wonder because you know you just step forward one  back to keep on going and thank you for what you do but i'm kind of curious how our system works what it was brought up during that meeting that we have some recurring situations where homeless people are and we clean it up and we move them out and then we go back again and they start all over again and it was brought up that we were concerned about what's happening at the wharf now it looks like there's a whole bunch of people again what you know it's starting one or two before you know there's four and before you know and there's one hundred of them like we saw before it's kind of sad that you know we just let it go and let it go and then all of us and we have a huge big problem so what i'm hearing is we need to make a complain did it start the process you know unfortunately some of these homeless situations we have this is the very very well and what i mean by that is when we go to do certain sweeps because of some of the land issues that we have where parks are tied into private tied into state if the county first is initiating the certain cleanup they'll just take a footstep over to the private property and now it becomes the you know for that particular cleanup we had they're fine because i wasn't initiated by be or perceive in sometimes a state so all of the parties need to kind of work together and i think from my experience with certain things that we try to clean up is the agencies actually communicating with each other and not dissing it off to say or their state or that's county or let's be and that's the challenges we face internally that we need to fix immediately and work together as a group instead of see he get off of my parks property and go sit on the state property so those are things we want to communicate better and work well together but that's one of the challenges that we face on a regular basis when it comes to cleanup thank you very much and all that to me it adds emphasis to the fact that we need to fill those positions and to get as quickly as we can so that you know everybody somebody and nobody but if we have a coordinator and they better do this quite a nation and maybe it'll help some of these problems but we really need to work on it also have one more question i mean i'm many i'll just as one more and give somebody else a chance you know apparently and i know this because i've been involved with  kind of work takes a lot of intense time and you have to work with people closely one on one and you know today it's a doctor appointment tomorrow it's dealing with a court another day medical i mean it goes on and on so in case management is really intense is there an issue with case management in this area or do we have enough people if we don't have enough people exactly what are we dealing with what is the need and thank you chair thank you thank you council member by so for that question it is definitely a high need when it comes to case management when when i hear and see i'm getting  skin because when i hear of when we talk about clients who missed their appointments because of a mental health issue and they miss appointments because they forget and they don't know and then case managers say they didn't make the appointment and so maybe i'll drop them maybe i'll drop them from my case but they don't know they don't have a calendar they don't have a sense of priority to be able to get to those appointments i've heard many many cases in that matter and i know of one in particular who sat in my office for a term because she was not able to get in to her appointment because she missed it just by half an hour and so it is a huge difficulty when it comes to case management and the lack of case managers and to be able to really get out there and to serve their clients i'm very much aware of what their work is you know every day there gradually one by one eventually you get to the bottom where they're run out of excuses and taking care of everything they show up i can tell you this personally i have several friends that close people that have made the transition but it's not easy and you know i think what mr comer brings up is really important it also is quickly issue of medical coverage outside of just mental health issues they have a lot of medical needs and their medical coverage because they didn't go for the review we encourage sometimes we'll have the mail sent to us so that we can when we know that something is coming up so that we can intervene and make sure that they make their appointments so they're frequent their coverage and then it's a whole process to get it back again and even once a person is housed what we found for example last week monday i calculated just on monday alone between the five of us that worked on one situation the person was housed but after housing for four months and constantly dealing with some  issues because of a substance addiction he finally agreed to go to treatment but in one day it took twenty hours of staff time to actually get him into a law it's just one day that one day and  is intense once they do get how's the need support services it's daily life skills after you've been on the streets for a year or more you don't know how to wash clothes you don't know how to u se the facilities properly even though you are house you don't know how to clean it and then the landlord gets really upset that's one of the reasons why we have housing we have apartments because we will take the people management to it to help them with some of the daily life skills that they need to remind them of their points if they have an appointment at twelve o'clock we'll pick them up in eight o'clock and make sure we keep an eye on them so there's a lot of support that goes after a person gets housed in that's one of the considerations we also have to have every time we house someone but it is intense thank do we really need to look at the people there's a large percentage of people who choose to be homeless because in their mind it's easier for  them that's what it sounds like you guys are saying i think that's where we need to say it can't be easier for them that's where we need those laws that are in the p i a committee big because if it is easy there's no incentive for them to get a home as i was really astonished that mr shooter that you said that people can afford the home they just choose not to and they just move around because like like you said it's easy and they don't have the laws that they they have to you know abide by  is it really miss coming said ninety percent of the people that she gets or i'm sorry you said twenty percent of the twenty people eighteen chose not to get  shelter is that the norm is that you're saying that twenty ninety percent of the people out there who are or homeless or homeless by choice  thank you council member couch you know maybe i misrepresented the numbers but there is a large group of people who choose not to find housing and all the outreach that maad staff does can attest to the fact that they'll come in and do some intakes but most of them when we when we have the assistance by community police and we do you know some of the compassionate responses that are there it's usually a lot of them will go back in with relatives as well but then it doesn't take very long for them to get back out into their car or their to another location and i think as i look at all the outreach people do unfortunately it takes time and it takes a lot of effort and it takes a lot of things that it takes a lot of movement that allows the homeless to finally say enough is enough and help me find housing but you know i've witnessed i've seen i i know  individuals who are out there for years as long as ten fifteen years who finally say ok i will get housed but in those ten fifteen years maad knows them you know they are rich people they know them all by name they know their circumstances they know how they can how they're able to help them and it is a great barrier when it comes to their finances when it comes to their insurance medical insurance and i might be premature in saying this but it's it gives me great honor to say that our office on aging we will be we are looking into and have establish a relationship with the veterans affair so when council member who come up brings up the veterans there is going to be a directive in regards to helping the veterans within our office and aging to to alleviate some of the barriers that persist with in getting them into housing or just getting them in for services  it might be a nice time since i bring up veterans to do a short commercial break and say that november third there is going to be fitter in stand down and we're hoping to be able to get veterans and the homeless in to find jobs housing to learn how to do resumes so have a job fair have services biters there to assist them but getting back to your question it is a very difficult time and very  a lot that the statistics are high debt most of them choose not to get housing that you know that's very eye opening chair i do have a couple more questions on a different approach you know there's a twenty fifteen state assessment of homeless it says that the state of hawaii and how to lure conducting a housing first approach which we've discussed this study knows that now his numbers are a total of fourteen individuals and families in the program where honolulu one hundred ninety it seems like that there are enough people that we can get more than fourteen individuals into this housing first what are the limitations why are we not expanding that number and is it that you know the choice factor that would be one but then i think the biggest crisis is because we don't have enough affordable rentals or places that would allow the homeless to be able to get housed and that's why one of the one of the initiatives that the mayor would really like to see is to be able to purchase some of noticing is that the groups are quite all together and working together some groups are saying that's not our coolie are we don't want to do something outside of our box how  we working with those individual groups to say no look you've got to you've got to get out of the silos and work together help each other so that the information can get out because there are certain groups that have different relationships with the homeless that they might be able to give them information if they're willing to and point them to the right places so how are you as a department getting them to work together because we're so given the funding a lot of the funding not all of it but a lot of it and we'd like to see more collaboration as opposed to cycles  thank you for that question and i think just last week we met with some of the neighbors and some of the entities that you're talking about and it is very clear for us that we do need to put our foot down and to request that some of the the reports that have been set months ago be provided for our for us to do our work and so there is discussion with the different i guess leaders of that group well it's not just that one area it's it's the whole  county that you know at least in the non profits that we find are helped partially find need to work together as opposed to individual even it seems like that there's still some of that you know it's not my end homelessness i think we've had that discussion and there's also the homeless alliance there's also the face group they are entities out there that have opened their doors for everyone to come together i've gone to these meetings and there are lots of them and their dad are trying to find solutions so what you're experiencing would be interesting for you to put that more into details as far as this separates those that you're indicating that's going on i basically don't see that but then you may see something that i don't you know we can we can look into that intervention so far as the way we operate we try to use the housing first approach which is a low barrier that housing is a right it's not a reward for compliant behavior so that we don't look at the behavior and say you are not entitled to housing because you behave this way so then that means we have to get your programs to be able to support that if somebody is going to have behavior that would be difficult for them to tolerate then we have to provide the support services and i think they're increasing it yesterday i heard two million dollars the state of hawaii is putting out some are supposedly the end of the month the housing first money  been promised money to come out various you know people working in silos one of the things i had a conversation with department the person who's in charge of the medicaid and they're working on a system where to be able to have medicaid pay for some of the services but specifically you know there's mental health services but the mental health services are just geared towards crisis prevention it doesn't really help for housing stabilization so i advocated for more training for housing stabilization mental health kind of services that whatever is threatening their housing stability that's what we should work on not just preventing a crisis and so i'm advocating all the time for services to be more coordinated so that we don't just address an issue in a way that doesn't allow someone to become stable in housing and then the last thing about people choosing to be homeless i don't think that anyone those are barriers so we're always asking ourselves as a service providers what if we've been working with somebody for ten years and they aren't we doing something wrong i we offering our services in a way that is not helpful so we're always examining what we're doing to ensure that what we offer is what people need and what they're able to access that we don't just be funding or resources to police those areas we will continue to grow until we can find a solution for the homeless achieve correct thank you thank you chair cavallo i just wanted to again thank you thank you and the committee for the opportunity to be able to publicly have the public see what's the concerns with the issues and what we face here on maui i wanted to think  also maad coming from family life center and officer while work for his well works anyway thank you thank you members any more questions  sure there's one more question that i'd like to look into and you probably need to find out later but years ago when i was in both rotary we had discovered that there were a number of apartments a housing were vacant because they needed renovation i'm just wondering if that situation has been cleared up or do we still have an issue there and stuff where you know that for us to have some sort of response to our inquiry thank you very much thank you members thank you for participating i appreciate we know that this is an ongoing problem this just is discussion at this time that we continue to work towards the resolve so we can find far more we residence those that have the different challenges and provide the kind of human infrastructure we need to case manage there's lots of work in this so if the members have no objections i will defer this matter because it will be coming up more than once thank you members we have completed today's agenda i'd like to thank representatives from the administration