 Welcome, viewers, to thinktechhawaii.com. Our show today is The Will of the People, and I'm Ian Ross, sitting in as host for Martha Randolph. My guest today is the executive director of RISE, a nonprofit that manages a shelter for youth experiencing homelessness. Karla Houser, welcome, and thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me. Before we go any further, I should mention to our viewers that I know Karla Houser because I actually volunteer with RISE, and that's how I actually got met. But please, Karla, tell me a bit about RISE and your role as executive director. Let's see. RISE, really my role as the executive director is to make sure we fulfill our mission. And the mission of RISE, really, it's two-fold. The first piece is to provide an access center for young people ages 18 to 24 who are experiencing homelessness and really to provide them a safe place, a very low barrier point of entry to transition off the streets and hopefully feel empowered to kind of start to make the changes that they need to become successful members of society and whatever that looks like and however we define that. And then, really, the second piece of our mission is about collaboration, community collaboration to be able to provide a lot of those basic needs services that young people when they're on the streets, they don't really have access to. Things like how to finish their education goals, things how to find employment opportunities, how to heal some of the trauma that they've experienced at the hands of adults, trusting adults who are supposed to protect them. And so, the big part of what I do in the day-to-day is facilitating a lot of those relationships, surrounding myself with a rock star team of staff and I get to assemble this team and then they really do a lot of the work and the healing and the process of getting these young people ready to take the next step. Well, it's certainly a big mission and there was a lot into that so let's dig a little bit further. You mentioned 18 to 24. Why these age groups in particular? It really, when RISE started to come about, we looked at a lot of the point-in-time data. We looked at on a national level this growing epidemic of youth homelessness that is starting to affect us here in Hawaii. One of the most recent point-in-time counts showed us that over 80 percent of those youth who were surveyed were actually sleeping unsheltered and they just were not utilizing the adult system so that's absolutely no disrespect to what the next steps in IHSs do. But the model that they were using was not one that took into account where young people are in their life, both developmentally with their distrust for adults. And so we really wanted to address that and start to take little chunks out of this unsheltered population that no one in Hawaii had really looked at diving into to create an emergency low barrier, two-tiered transitional approach to this group. So I think you use a few interesting terms there that our viewers might not be feeling really aware of. So the first one I think is that low barrier access point. So can you go into it? So I mean, it sounds like you're elaborating something more than just like a bed or a shelter because someone could walk in as a point of access. What is the point of access to? It actually low barrier is just that we don't have a lot of rules. We don't have a ton of paperwork. You're not required to be sober. There's no fees. There's not an extensive amount of paperwork. We're simply giving you a safe place to come in and sleep. It's tier one of what we do is being able to provide just, it's amazing. And I can speak for just the general population. When you don't have good sleep, you don't make good decisions. And for so many of our young people, they are in survival mode and how they interact with the public and how they really haven't built up a trusting network of adults. And so we really are the first line of defense. So they can come in and the idea is that we don't have time limits, however long it takes them to start to come in and look around and say, hey, I actually trust the people here. I'm engaged with my peers and I think I'm ready to take the next step. And for them, whatever that next step is. So you talked about tier one, so it's two tiers and you talk about whatever the next step is. What is the goal that you have for tier two? Tier two is once the young people come in and figure out that there is more available to them and that we fully engulf this positive youth development model where they have choice. It's within building their confidence, making sure that they have a voice in the program. That's all really, really important for us. But once they take that step and start to pursue whatever that next empowerment piece is for them. That's why empowerment is really important in our work and what we do. So many of them are just a few credit shy. Maybe we could define what Rye stands for for us in this step. Rye is Residential Youth Services and Empowerment. So that's the empowerment part. And sure, it would be easy for us as the adults to say, I think you should. And if you've ever worked with teenagers, if you've ever had teenagers, that doesn't fly. That's a surefire way to put up that wall because they look at you like, you don't know about my life, you don't have that relationship. And so having them believe that we're simply walking beside them in this journey and not dictating to them, you have to do this treatment plan. You have to do this education plan. It's where do you want to go? And so that really is tier two for us. If their goal is to pursue their education and they're willing to take the steps to complete that. If their goal is, hey, you know what, I have a substance use problem. I need some help. It's affecting my day to day. That is a step in the right direction. That's empowerment. And we honor that in the program. And so they initially come in and tier one, they get a cot and a footlocker. And with the goal that they can transition into their own private bedroom. And then once they hit that private bedroom, that's where a lot of the real work comes in. We do financial literacy. There's intensive case management. We do a number of different independent living skills building on those. You'd be amazed at how many young people coming directly off the streets have no concept of how to do laundry, how to cook a meal for themselves, how to live communally among other young people. And so just having that experience at Rise has really, we have a lot of really positive results so far. We've been open for eight months and we've already graduated a number of young people out of our program. So we're really excited about it. So you mentioned you've graduated a number of young people. How many people are currently in your shelter? Rise has the capacity, when we first opened, Rise had the capacity for 10 young men and 10 young women. And within the first two weeks, we were full. And I often make this analogy that if you would have told me before we opened that our shelter, which is in Kailua, located on the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility Campus, it's a mile away from the nearest bus station, the bus stop. If you would have told me that we'd be full with a 17-person wait list, I would have told you you were crazy. But that is the reality of where we are. We've been really fortunate that this legislation and administration has recognized the importance of addressing youth homelessness. And we are in the works for an AHANAZM contract through the Office of Youth Services. And that will allow us to expand and add an additional 10 beds, as well as provide more intensive wraparound services. We were recently able to hire a behavioral health coordinator to really address the substance abuse issues that our young people face, a lot of the therapeutic approach, getting them to really start to heal a lot of the trauma that they've experienced over a life long of being on the streets. Well, let's take a few steps back, because I want to make sure that we're defining terms while you mentioned AHANAZM. So I saw in December, Mihail Lani Richardson did a story about you and Rice about becoming a AHANAZM. The governor had selected you as one of the locations. Can you tell us a bit about this between AHANAZM and what you were prior as a shelter? Yes, we have a fantastic board that has done a tremendous job of fundraising for us and bringing in private dollars that really allowed us to pilot this project in the first six months. We weren't reliant on city or state funding. We want to participate in the process, and we also know what a valuable partner that our state and city officials and what that funding stream could look like for us and the ability to expand further. And what the AHANAZM allows us to do is it's not tent cities. I think that has to be really clear. It's not just allowing people to come in, do whatever they want. AHANAZM funding really allows for the wraparound services that are essential for anyone experiencing homelessness to get a leg up and to get the tools and the resources that they need to transition out of homelessness. So it sounds like AHANAZM is less about a change on being a shelter, but more about these wraparound services. Yes, for us, absolutely. I can't speak for anyone else. But with the AHANAZM funding for us also comes a connection with the UH School of Nursing so that we're able to provide medical care for our young people. It also brings in third-party evaluation. So are these the wraparound services you were mentioning? Yep. Being able to add behavioral health coordination, getting the young people the care that all comes to us because we have been awarded AHANAZM funding. Okay, so you of course mentioned that there was the second step was finding out how empowering young people to be able to make the changes in life they feel they need to make. But of course a very important part about sheltering individuals is helping to make sure they also transition to housing. So what does the process look like for transitioning youth into housing? Have you been successful with any youth so far that come through RISE? Yeah, we have. And the one part of this that I really like is that there are not a lot of time limits. We don't have anybody kind of telling us that in 90 days they have to be ready to transition out. That's just not the case when you look at an 18-year-old who shows up on our doorstep who has lived on the street by themselves since the age of 14. They're not going to be ready in 90 days or even six months. And so in allowing us to kind of have this process of what it looks like, it really starts with the boots on the ground, folks. We have an amazing outreach team that goes out into the community. They answer the calls. They participate in the neighborhood boards. And really just being that pulse on where young people are and their sole responsibility is getting kids in, bringing them into RISE. And then once our young people are there, it really falls on our case management, our youth care counselors to build those independent living skills, whether it's financial literacy, teaching them the value of credit and why you really want to take good care of this, opening bank accounts, getting them lined up for their medical insurance, teaching them proper shopping techniques for their, when they get their EBT, their SNAP benefits, making purchases at 7-Eleven is probably not the best financially savvy move that you can make. And so a lot of education goes in and walking, again, like I said, beside them and helping them not feel shamed. Like, hey, can somebody show me how to wash clothes? So all of that happens and then we do a lot of case conferencing around each and every one of the young people that come in. And then once we feel that they're ready and that we absolutely want to set them up for success, once we feel that they're ready, RISE, along with many of the other youth serving providers, participate in the Partners in Care Coordinated Entry System process. And we have been allotted a number of housing vouchers through HUD. And currently, Hawaii has roughly about 40 vouchers just through HUD through various organizations. And we can then transition our young people either directly from the streets or from RISE into a rapid rehousing voucher, which provides a shallow subsidy for a short period of time with the hopes that once they get into housing, they can sustain that rent on their own afterwards. Well, thank you very much for this information, especially related to the people walking into the door and how this transitions into empowerment and then how this kind of leads into transition people into a more stabilized housing. We're going to have to take a break for a moment, but then let's dig into a bit about why you're so passionate about this topic. You got it. All right. We'll be right back after this break. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. Aloha and mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii with Think Tech Hawaii. We come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch. For our mission of empowerment, we aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, mabuhay, and aloha. And we're back with the Will of the People. This is Ian Ross, sitting in for Martha Randolph. I'm today speaking with Carla Hauser, the executive director of Rise. She's been sharing with us some information about the shelter they run and how it's become an ohana zone, the types of services to provide, and how they're transitioning young people in Hawaii off of the streets into sustainable housing situations. My question for Carla at this point, it's very clear to me, and I'm pretty sure everyone watching, that you're very passionate about this topic of helping young people and solving the homelessness crisis here in Hawaii. So tell us, what inspires you to get up every morning and work on this? Selfishly, I say, I do this work because this generation of youth is gonna take care of me when I'm old one day. These young people inspire me on a daily basis because of the resiliency factor. There are things that they have experienced, the level of loss, the level of parental neglect, the trauma, whether it's physical or sexual, that they've experienced. Yet every day when we walk in to rise, we're met with just an enormous amount of hope, an enormous amount of just the resiliency is really what I think drives me, the fact that when I've had a tough day and I reflect back on some of the things that these young people have experienced, I know that I'm not alone in this fight because we do a very good job of incorporating their voice. I am a big proponent of that. I feel that anytime we have policy, anytime that we wanna make up rules or even just how we operate rise, a big part of what we do is to make sure we incorporate the youth voice. We have a house meeting twice a month and they're allowed to share what they like, what they don't like. And I think on a more personal level, I've been where many of them have been. I've done things in my life in order to survive. I've experienced some of the same issues, whether it's around parental substance use or your own personal substance use. A number of our staff have deep experiences with sobriety and substance use and they bring that richness to our program and I'm so grateful for that. Our staff, our people, our board, they don't do this work because there's any sort of monetary gain. It's really, I had one staff person tell me and hopefully he's not watching and he won't be able to. I had a conversation with him and I said, why do you wanna do this work? And he shared with me that, yeah, he could go swing a hammer and he can make a whole lot more money but he wanted to address the suffering. He felt really compelled that there was so much suffering in this world and he wanted to do something, anything, in order to address that. And I think that thought really resonates, I think, with any of us that are associated with RISE in that we've been there. We know what it is to be that young person to not have a whole lot of support, to not have, to have suffered a great deal of loss. And it's usually, it was an adult, it was a trusted adult who helped us find our way and find our path. And I think that is really what motivates me is to be able to surround myself with a team that can be that ray of hope for our young people. That's really important for me. That sounds really powerful and really motivating. So you're talking about being inspired often by the resiliency. So what are some of those moments where you've been able to look at it and feel like you did that moment where you reduced suffering in the world? Like what are some of those moments where you can say, like, wow, this was a huge difference between when someone walked in and when they're leaving? The ones that I think that are really hitting my heart lately are those young people that are transitioning out of some of the other child welfare systems, whether it's the correctional system, whether it's child welfare or some sort of residential mental health. Those that are right now at a point that if rise did not exist, they would be on the streets and they would be the next wave of homelessness that Oahu has to face. And right now, I think our number is very small. We're taking 30 of those young people off of the streets. But I am a firm believer that this is a generational issue that we're facing here on Oahu. I've been in the game long enough that I have known parents who their children are now at rise and their children that are at rise have also had children who they no longer have custody of. And so I can point to three generations of folks and the time is now to really start to address this youth homelessness issue. I'm a firm believer in what the CDC says about that there is no safe level of homelessness for children. And I think that the continuum of care, partners in care has done a really fantastic job of addressing family homelessness. I am excited about the work that we are starting to do with youth homelessness. I'm always in there making sure I, well, what about the youth? What about the youth? To keep us all understanding that we wanna end the cycle. And I do believe that starting with our young people is the key to doing that. Let's dig into that a bit because when I talk to individuals about homelessness, definitely ones if people are not nearly as formed as you, I typically hear about like three categories of people they see as becoming homeless. One is the really tragic individuals like they lose their job, there's medical bills, and a family falls into homelessness that way. Another one is you're mentioning substance abuse. And the third is, and this is one that comes up in this huge disputes over the numbers, but people coming from other areas who are homeless adults coming to Hawaii. But you're really focusing on something else right now, which is that young people who are the most vulnerable, being homeless never really getting any of the tools to pull themselves out of it. So is this what you feel is the real driving factor behind homelessness in Hawaii? I can only really speak to the youth homelessness and what I see. I don't see the numbers of mainland folks coming to Hawaii to be homeless. I do know that the UH Center on Family Street Youth Survey that was done in 2017 showed an overwhelming majority of the youth who were experiencing homelessness were born and raised here. These are our Hawaii kids. We did see a surprising number. It was 22% of the young people had family that had military experience. That was something that was very surprising to us. And I think it's something worth a deeper dive. But as far as one of the real big glaring issues for us in the youth system is that there's often not a plan. When these young people are aging out, whether it's aging out of foster care, which typically across the board, there are high levels of homelessness among former foster care youth, high levels of homelessness among youth who have juvenile detention involvement. We also see high levels of homelessness with parental substance use issues. And so it is not addressing the transitions that I think is something I'm very passionate about. And if we have to, again, highlighting on that collaboration piece of what RISE is really about, we're having really good conversations with the Department of Education and with Child Welfare about how do we address this lack of services on their 18th birthday, knowing everything that we know about brain development and socially where they are and they're not ready to make adult choices even though they're the magic age of 18. Also, they have a lot of support through CAMD and a lot of the mental health and substance abuse services. And what's alarming is as soon as they turn 18, all of those services go away. Those services go away and now this 18 to 24-year-old population is just expected to fit into the adult model and it doesn't work. If I'm struggling with my substance use, yes, I wanna go to an AA meeting and I wanna get help or I wanna go to Hinamaka, how much of those services are really adolescent specific? I would like to build on that. I think you did a great job of highlighting a lot of these drivers. Some I think the viewers won't be surprised by, some which I think many people would be surprised by. Let's break this into a different direction. What are some common misconceptions about homelessness that you would like to disillusion our viewers from? Again, I will speak, I always try and push the youth out there. One of the big misconceptions that I really struggle with and I really try and control the narrative is that an overwhelming majority of these young people are really fantastic, law abiding, awesome, awesome individuals. So often if something bad happens in Waikiki, we often the first thing we look at it, oh, it's gotta be the street youth, it's gotta be the homeless kids. The misconception that they're gonna steal or rob or that large groups of young people are somehow dangerous. Those are things I think is definitely a misconception. We see it all the time in trying to find housing solutions, permanent housing solutions for young people. You're already as a landlord, pretty shy about wanting to rent to a young person because you have this stigma that they're gonna trash your place. And then when you throw in that that adjective of homeless before that, it just, it's another layer, it's another barrier to that. We struggle with the idea that a lot of young people are what we call idle, meaning they're not in school or they're not in work. And we found that just having conversations with them about what it is that they wanna do, what are your hopes, what are your dreams? A lot of them have these big, beautiful, lofty, where they wanna go in their lives. They just don't know how. They don't know how, they've never been taught. When you think about generational homelessness, if my whole life I've watched mom and dad sit in a tent and smoke ice and not go to work, and then, but I wanna do better. Someone has to teach them how to do better. And that's the challenge in a lot of this. And I think that's the misconception that they don't want a better life. And again, when you empower them with their voice, it's really remarkable what you get out of it. Well, that's something very fortunate to have you and being one of those people who can help model them and help them moving forward. Well, we have reached the end of our show. So I wanna thank you, Carla, for joining us and thank all our viewers for watching today. This has been The Will of the People. My name is Ian Ross and I'm signing out.