5 chang

From Council to Congress?

Political correspondent Will Caron interviewed Honolulu city councilmember Stanley Chang, who is a candidate for the US House of Representatives. The full interview is available in the app edition.

Will Caron

Will Caron: You support a pu‘uhonua-style, restorative justice solution to homelessness. Where would we locate a pu‘uhonua on Oahu? Would you support one in District 4?

I think we need to be open-minded about where to locate one. But the most important thing is to locate it in an area that would not impact either our residents or our visitor industry. Waikiki and East-Honolulu today are impacted disproportionately by homelessness so any insinuation that Waikiki and East-Honolulu aren’t bearing their fair-share of the burden is, in fact, 180 degrees wrong.

The need for a puuhonua comes from the idea that traditional shelters typically have rules like no pets, no alcohol, no drugs. As a result the people who aren’t able to abide by those rules–that have a substance issue or a mental health issue–are the ones that end up on the streets and they’re the ones who are most disruptive to residents and visitors and are the ones with the least amount of options for shelter.

A pu‘uhonua is a type of shelter where there wouldn’t be as many rules; where there wouldn’t be the same kind of prohibition on drinking, on drugs, on pets and so forth. There would be a minimum amount of security so people who work could leave their belongings there and they wouldn’t be taken. There would be restroom and sanitation facilities, drug and alcohol counseling, mental health treatment–all these services that would be right there to help people transition from the streets into more permanent, suitable housing. That’s a gap, frankly, that we have done a very poor job of filling and out of all the different solutions that I’ve heard proposed, there haven’t been any that would house as many people with as many issues as quickly as the pu‘uhonua model.