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Wearing surgical masks to block the stench, city workers pulled apart piles of junk that blocked the sidewalk: an eclectic collection of soggy towels, foam pads, bicycle tires, suitcases, a television, bottles of urine and a chandelier.

Off to the side, 58-year-old Elizabeth Wong Talaeai sat in her wheelchair, watching placidly. She lives on this Kakaako sidewalk, just a couple of blocks from the downtown office towers that glisten in the morning sun.

"All I got is my wheelchair," she said, her graying hair pulled into a bun, her feet swollen with diabetes. "I don't care already." Most of the stuff stretching along the block wasn't hers anyway, she said. Other street people had asked her to watch it because she can't go far.

A police officer at the cleanup offered Talaeai a flier encouraging her to try a nearby homeless shelter. Her social worker, too, has been trying to convince her to move to a home for the disabled. She isn't interested.

"He wants to put me in a group home, but I don't want that," said Talaeai, who grew up in Waiahole. "I want my own house. I'm a stubborn one and a very picky one."

So she has been living outside for the past couple of years — first at Ala Moana Beach Park, then Diamond Head, now Kakaako. "Lucky thing, people are so beautiful," she said, her tan cheeks creasing into a wide smile. "They give me food. They give me some clothes."

The state has taken bold steps to house the homeless during the past few years, opening six new shelters since May 2006 and helping thousands of people with no roofs over their heads. Overall, the number of people taking refuge at homeless shelters on Oahu has grown steadily, reaching 5,311 in the last year, up from 3,857 in 2005, according to the Center on the Family at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

But Honolulu's street population shot up even faster. The number of unsheltered homeless who received outreach services, such as meals, at any point during the year soared from 1,293 in 2005 to 5,356 in 2008 before falling to 4,987 last year, according to data from the state's Homeless Management Information System compiled for the Star-Bulletin by the UH Center on the Family. Altogether, 9,496 homeless people used shelters, outreach services or both last year.

Street people keep turning up in new neighborhoods across the island. They cluster under the covered lanais of public facilities in Oahu parks. They pitch tents and claim swatches of prime real estate at Kapiolani Park in the tourist mecca of Waikiki.

The public is virtually unanimous in its concern. A Star-Bulletin poll taken last month found that a whopping 96 percent of respondents felt that the problem of homelessness is a "very serious" or "serious issue" in Hawaii. Just 3 percent felt it was "not so serious," and 1 percent was not sure. No one chose "not serious at all." More than half, or 53 percent, also felt it was a very serious or serious problem in their own community.

"The homeless are becoming more visible," said Sylvia Yuen, director of the UH Center on the Family. "They're into our neighborhoods. In Hawaii Kai, Kaimuki and Manoa, you see homeless people, and you never used to. Very often the ones that you see are these men or women with their grocery carts, filled with all kinds of stuff."

"That's the face of the homeless," she said. "But they are not all of the homeless. There are children, families, homeless people who work and have jobs; there are homeless who have college degrees."

She said the situation would be "much worse" if the state, private providers and the faith community had not taken action in the past few years. After the city began evicting the homeless from public parks, starting with Ala Moana in March 2006, Gov. Linda Lingle issued an emergency proclamation to expedite projects to help them, citing health and safety concerns. In the space of six days, a downtown warehouse was whipped into shape as the Next Step homeless shelter.

"In 2006 the economy was booming, and so housing prices were high, very high," recalled Russ Saito, the state's homeless coordinator. "Families who were renting were now being thrown into the homeless category. Our focus was on building shelters so we could take families out of the homeless ranks."

Since launching Next Step in May 2006, the state has opened five more emergency and transitional shelters along the Leeward Coast. That has doubled the number of living units available for the homeless to 1,188 and pushed up the emergency bed count by 50 percent to 785 beds, Saito said.

Thousands of homeless people have been helped into permanent housing from the shelters or the streets, including 3,500 just in the last fiscal year, he said. Meanwhile, the fraction of children among the unsheltered population on Oahu has shrunk, from 18 percent in 2005 to 8 percent last year, according to Center on the Family data.

"My son, he wanted a home," said Barrylyn Aldeguer, who shares a room with her husband, Juan, and 12-year-old son at one of the new state shelters, Onelauena, in converted military housing at Kalaeloa. "I thank God that we're here because it's better for him. He's just happy to be indoors and have a place to stay. He is so happy that there's people who love us, sometimes even more than family."

The Aldeguers moved to Onelauena a few months ago after spending more than two years on the beach at Maili, where they pitched a tent alongside their van. Barrylyn used to commute to her job at the movie theater at downtown's Restaurant Row every day "just to keep food on the table," until the theater shut down in August.

"The people here help us a lot," she added. "They know what we go through, whether it be drugs or domestic violence. People come in and they get the services they need and a place to stay. I had a lot of anger problems, a lot of worry, a lot of stress." She is now taking anger management classes, and her husband hopes to find work as a security guard.

Onelauena operates on the "Housing First" model, according to Kananikaaiawahia Bulawan, administrative adviser for Waianae Community Outreach, which runs the shelter. The priority is to get people off the street and into a secure place of their own, and then support them with services. Also known as "supportive housing," it is an approach that has been proved to work with the chronic homeless, the toughest to reach.

The chronic homeless make up a substantial portion of the street population in Honolulu. One out of every three people living outside on Oahu is considered chronically homeless, according to the city's 2009 Point-in-Time Count, in which workers fanned out across the island to take a single-day census of the homeless. The government defines "chronic homeless" as single people with disabling conditions such as substance abuse or mental illness who have been homeless for a year or more, or repeatedly.

And even with successful programs like Onelauena, it's an uphill battle. The recession keeps pushing more local residents into homelessness, as workers lose jobs and cannot pay their rents. The homeless ranks in Hawaii are also swelled by an inflow from beyond its shores. Hard-up mainlanders fly to Hawaii in hopes of better luck and better weather. Migrants from Micronesia are landing on shelter doorsteps in increasing numbers.

"If you never address that incoming flow and the numbers keep coming, you're never going to make a dent," said Connie Mitchell, executive director of the Institute for Human Services, a major shelter.

"We get them from Alaska, Texas, the East Coast," she said. "They're running from the cold. Many will take their welfare check and cash it in and just come to a warmer climate thinking they're going to get a job. It's almost like a byproduct of tourism."

Today the largest chunk of Honolulu's street population — 43 percent — is Caucasian, followed by Hawaiians at 28 percent, according to the most recent data from the UH Center on the Family. That is a reversal from 2005, when the largest percentage was Hawaiian, at 41 percent, and Caucasians at 21 percent. Inside the homeless shelters, Hawaiians are the largest group, at 30 percent, followed by "other Pacific islanders," mostly Micronesians and Marshallese, at 23 percent.

Late last year a dozen homeless people had taken over the restroom and spacious, covered lanai at Ala Wai Field, a popular site for kids and adults playing soccer and baseball. It left regular park users uncomfortable.

"I don't know why they should be able to inhabit the public facilities," said Fielding Mercer, a coach with the American Youth Soccer Organization, whose team practiced there. "My son and I used to play soccer there, and you don't feel safe letting your kids go into the bathroom."

Last week the homeless had been cleared out of Ala Wai, and the facilities were cordoned off. City work crews move from one park to the next, roping off areas to revitalize the grass, sanitize public facilities and restore them for public use.

In Kakaako the sidewalk where Talaeai lived in her wheelchair was clear last week, after being power-washed and sanitized.

Sgt. Michael DeSmet of the Honolulu Police Department, who was at the cleanup, said the mess had gotten to the point where something had to be done. There was enough to fill two dump trucks, stretching along much of the block.

"It's a public health issue and an eyesore," he said. "The public is entitled to parks. The public has a right to use the sidewalk."

But he has no illusions about the long-term effects of the sweep. "It's not going to go away," he said. "You do a cleanup here and it's just going to move somewhere else."

SINGLE-DAY SNAPSHOT

Count of the homeless on a single day, Jan. 23, 2009, taken by workers fanning out across Oahu.

Sheltered homeless: 2,445

Unsheltered homeless: 1,193

Source: City and County of Honolulu, Homeless Point-in-Time Count, 2009

Who are the homeless?

Hawaiians are the largest ethnic group in shelters, while Caucasians predominate among the unsheltered homeless in Honolulu.

A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS

Most homeless families with children are in shelters, after a concerted push by the state to provide emergency and transitional housing for them.

Homeless in Honolulu	Sheltered	Unsheltered
Percentage who are children	35%	8%
Percentage of adults who are veterans	14%	13%
Percentage of adults who are employed	29%	13%
Percentage of adults with some college education	22%	25%

KAMAAINA VS. MALIHINI

More than half of the unsheltered homeless have lived in Hawaii their whole lives.

Source: Homeless Service Utilization Report, Hawaii 2009, Center on the Family, University of Hawaii at Manoa

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