Bissen administration explains years-long delay in homeless overnight parking program

More than two years after Maui County Council members unanimously approved a bill to allow homeless people to sleep in their cars in county parking lots, a pilot program has yet to be implemented, even after the J. Walter Cameron Center’s parking lot was initially identified as an appropriate location in the fall of 2022.

The years-long delay in carrying out the pilot parking program frustrated homeless advocates and Native Hawaiians who testified during a Tuesday meeting of the Council’s Water Authority, Social Services and Parks Committee.

Their discontent with ongoing County inaction was further inflamed by recent statements that tie today’s homelessness in Hawaiʻi with the 1893 US overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. The so-called “bloodless coup” led to US annexation of Hawaiʻi in 1898 and statehood in 1959.

In her testimony, Moʻi Kawaakoa referred to the recently released paper titled “Recommendations to Address Homelessness in Maui County.” The 60-plus-page report was prepared for the Department of Human Concerns by ECOnorthwest in collaboration with Konè Consulting and Munekiyo Hiraga.

Kawaakoa told council members: “I’m going to read a lot of acknowledgements.” She then quoted extensively from the report’s fourth page. Under the heading “Land Acknowledgement,” the report acknowledges Hawaiʻi as the ancestral home of Native Hawaiians, who are predominantly impacted by homelessness.

“We acknowledge that the United States government and citizens of the United States illegally overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and forced Queen Liliʻuokalani to yield the Hawaiian Kingdom to the United States government under duress,” it says.

It says that the “US government suppressed the inherent sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people, stole land from Native Hawaiian people, and continues to illegally occupy Hawaiʻi.”

The report says its authors “reflect on these truths to ground our understanding of the root causes of homelessness in Maui County… We understand that Native Hawaiians are uniquely and disproportionately affected by the issue of homelessness as well as other economic, environmental, health and social challenges in Maui County. “

Kawaakoa stopped and said: “‘We understand.’ Really? Do you really understand?”

Then, she continued: “In Maui County, we must also strive to right and balance our relations with generational and lineal descendants of this ʻāina.”

Kawaakoa said the safe parking program came to light in 2022, and on Monday, she learned via an email that 250 people lost their jobs because of federal cuts.

“What you guys going to do for step up and help?” she asked. “Because they are going to end up homeless.”

Haʻikū resident Trinette Furtado said the statements connecting homelessness to the loss of the Hawaiian kingdom ring hollow because they’re “nothing without action.”

“It’s just words,” she said. “It’s words we throw around to escape culpability, to escape responsibility. And this parking, the safe parking option that you have available before you now (which has actually been since 2022) is something that is action.”

She alluded to the administration’s message that it’s “working on” the Safe Parking pilot project.

“Great,” Furtado said. “I’m hearing from the Mayor’s Office that, you know, they’re still looking… for a parking spot. What happened all these years since it went into the fiscal year 2023 budget?”

In the meantime, the wildfire devastated Maui in August 2023. And, now, fire survivors who’ve come to depend on federally funded jobs lost them on Monday.

“Those people have rent coming up,” she said. “Those people have bills coming up. Some of those may not be able to stay in their homes, and we don’t have adequate shelter. We don’t have adequate spaces for these people to go to, but we understand right?”

“We understand it’s tough,” Furtado said. “We can’t just understand. If we understand it’s tough, then we must do something about it. We must do something about it, yesterday. We have the opportunity to do so now. Sitting in [an] office talking about it does not help. Safe parking is something that would help a lot of not just newly unsheltered but those who are chronically unsheltered who weren’t able to find housing before all these disasters.”

Nara Boone said she had been listening to testimony and wrote the word “urgency” in her notes and underlined it five times.

“What our community is going through is so much bigger than, you know, what can be assisted with one safe parking program,” Boone said. “However, our community is suffering to an extent it’s never suffered before.”

She said that for nothing to be done in three years is “inexcusable.”

“It is time for us as a community, for you, as council members, and for the state to pick up the slack that is happening right now,” Boone said.

Testifier Maya Marquez said she’s “beyond frustrated” with ongoing meetings about homelessness, but no real action.

“Every day people are dying on our streets,” she said. “People who have names, families and stories,” she said. “And what do we do? We meet. We talk. We waste more time. When will we stop pretending that discussing problems endlessly is actually solving anything? When will we stop talking about studies and numbers and start talking about real solutions?”

“Enough is enough,” she said.

Department of Human Concerns Director Lori Tsuhako told committee members Tuesday that Mayor Richard Bissen had provided the committee with a Feb. 13 correspondence that “pretty much outlines the history of this project.”

“Right now, we are working with the Mayor’s Office and his staff, as well as some potential vendors and Corporation Counsel to try and, I think, develop a better proposal for the community,” she said. “And, we’re not prepared at this time to give either the committee or the public any details, because those haven’t been worked out yet.”

She added that officials have learned from the past that “it’s better to do better planning and get all of the ducks in a row before making announcements and then necessarily backtrack and redo things.”

The Safe Parking program was initiated in the last five months of former Mayor Michael Victorino’s administration.

In the Feb. 13 letter, Mayor Bissen explained that the pilot project for safe parking for homeless people dates back to April 2022. Back then, the County Council added $200,000 to the Department of Housing and Human Concerns’ budget to “establish a safe zone or sleeping space for the houseless.”

In August 2022, the Council passed Bill 108. The bill, introduced by former Council Member Kelly King, amended the Maui County Code to allow people to sleep in vehicles within a county parking lot, if agreed to by the director of the department responsible for that lot. In September 2022, the county announced the Cameron Center in Wailuku as the location for the parking lot project.

Bissen said Department of Human Concerns’ records show J. Walter Cameron leadership then consulted with County Council leadership and Share Your Mana, a homeless advocacy group. A month later, the department was informed that the $200,000 grant agreement with the Cameron Center “did not meet the standard for Corporation Counsel’s approval of form and legality because Maui County Code 3.36 required that ‘solicitation must occur,’ ” Bissen wrote.

Then, according to the mayor, the department proceeded — based on guidance from Corporation Counsel — to draft an “Invitation to Apply” for the Safe Parking pilot project, and it released an invitation on Dec. 9, 2022.

“Unfortunately, the invitation to apply did not yield any proposals to operate the Safe Parking lot project,” said Bissen, who took office in January 2023. “The department made an announcement in early January 2023 that no agencies had submitted proposals.”

Bissen told council members: “The administration believes that Safe Parking is needed within the county, and is currently working on a revised/updated Request for Applications for a Safe Parking pilot project. The administration’s hope is that, in addition to county-owned land, private landowners may consider working with service providers to submit proposals for consideration. It plans to release the Invitation to Apply this fiscal year.”

A similar Safe Parking program has been helping reduce homelessness and homeless encampments since March 2022 in Santa Rosa, Calif., a city of approximately 175,000 residents in the Bay Area north of San Francisco. The project started with a budget of $1.3 million and has continued with an annual budget of $1 million, according to Sasha Brown, a homeless services program specialist with the city.

After concluding public testimony at 12:27 p.m. The committee, chaired by Council Member Shane Sinenci, was running out of time. Another meeting was scheduled for 1:30 p.m.

Council Member Tamara Paltin asked about possibly using a parking lot in the Honokōwai area of West Maui, abutting Honoapiʻilani Highway, for the Safe Parking program.

“It’s a whole parking area that has cars,” she said. “I don’t know how those cars have permission to park there… Do we know all the parking lots the county owns? Like, why is it so hard?”

Maui County Homeless Coordinator Naomi Crozier said she was aware of that parking lot and was considering it as a possible site, but she referred questions to Tsuhako for why that lot wasn’t being used for the Safe Parking program.

Tsuhako said she’s also familiar with the property, which was granted by executive order to the County for affordable housing during the administration of former Mayor Charmaine Tavares. However, it was later determined the property could not be used for affordable housing because it was landlocked and not accessible from the highway. The county is trying to return the property to the state because affordable housing can’t be built there, she said.

“We’re not talking about affordable housing,” Paltin said. “We’re just talking about a safe place to park.”

She pointed out people are parking there already and apparently have access from another road.

“I mean the Tavares administration was so long ago, and only things got worse since then,” Paltin said.

She suggested that the Bissen administration be “creative with the lands we own and have authority over.”

“Cars can be temporary, modular homes, you know?” she said.

Ultimately, the committee deferred action on the Safe Parking program. The issue is expected to be taken up again — for more discussion — during a future meeting.

Editor’s note: Brian Perry served as director of communications under former Mayor Michael Victorino. In that capacity, he oversaw the preparation of a press release that announced the Cameron Center in Wailuku as the location of the parking lot. He also participated in a media press conference at the parking lot as part of that announcement.