With wildfire survivors excluded, point-in-time count shows drop in neighbor island homeless

KAHULUI (HawaiiNewsNow) – Thousands of people lost their homes after the devastating wildfires on Maui last August, but the latest neighbor island point-in-time count reveals homelessness declined when fire survivors weren’t taken out of the official total.

“We separated so we can do a comparison of our ongoing yearly point-in-time counts,” said Maude Cumming, Family Life Center chief executive officer.

On one night in January, teams counted 1,895 homeless people on the islands of Hawaii, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, and Kauai.

The count is a snapshot of the homeless population and is required by the federal government.

“It’s just a one-day snapshot. That’s all it is. So, we would like for HUD (Housing and Urban Development) to say we’ll depend on your information that you put in on a daily basis,” Cumming said. “That to me is a more accurate picture of what happens.”

Numbers from the neighbor island point-in-time count released on Wednesday show an overall drop of 14% from 2023.

Maui County is down 7% from 2023.

Officials say it is the seventh straight year Maui’s count has dropped.

“It looks like there are more people than there actually are,” said Cumming.

“Because each person say, has 10 shopping carts. Also, down at the harbor, we had a client that had like 40 or 50 cars, all belonging to one person because he was doing some repairs. So, it looks like there are a lot of people.”

Hawaii Island officials are celebrating a 28% reduction in their homeless numbers from last year. Officials attribute the success to new funding to address the problem.

“The county council created a new tier tax. Homes valued at $2M or more pay a separate, a different, higher tier tax,” said Bridging The Gap Chair Brandee Menino. “And 75% of that tier tax is collected in real property tax and is allocated specifically to fund homeless and housing services.”

While Kauai is seeing a drop in children sleeping in shelters and a decrease of families living on the streets, their overall homeless population is up for the third straight year.

“We’re seeing heavy impacts on drug use and substance use, misuse. We’re seeing it locally on Kauai, a lot of encampments and communities are being affected by the influence of drugs,” said Kauai Community Alliance Chair Makana Kamibayashi.

“Then also, the lack of resources, mental health support.”

Kamibayashi said Kauai hopes to implement what Hawaii Island is doing to decrease their numbers.