 Welcome. I'm Chris Aguinaldo and this is Aloha United We Stand at ThinkTech Hawaii, brought to you each week by ThinkTech Hawaii and Aloha United Way. And remember, you can join the conversation on Twitter at ThinkTechHI. I'm joined here by Jen Stosh, the Director of Partners in Care, and they are looking towards a collaborative cross-sector approach to ending homelessness in Hawaii. Welcome, Jen Stosh. How are you today? Thank you. I'm wonderful. Thank you for stopping by. And homelessness is brought up by many people, especially right now during an election cycle. But it's a continuing issue that we have to deal with. Can you give me a little bit of background on the organization and what the group is and what are your aims? Sure, absolutely. Partners in Care is actually a collaboration of many different stakeholders, including non-profit organizations, government agencies, and other private stakeholders where we come together with the sole mission of ending homelessness here on Oahu. Specifically Oahu. Specifically Oahu. Partners in Care works in collaboration with the neighbor island's continuum of care, which is called Bridging the Gap. But Bridging the Gap is really charged with resolving the issue on the neighbor island, but we certainly work in collaboration. But we have a big problem here on Oahu, so we've got a lot of work to do. On Oahu, as the population been increasing? The homeless population has been increasing. Luckily, we are seeing a decrease in the rate of increase, so there is somewhat of some positive news there. So it's slowed down? It has slowed down. But I still recall, and please correct me if this is not right, but I have read that Hawaii has the highest per capita homeless in its population versus the other states in the union. Is that correct? That is correct. Why is that the case? Well, that's the case for several reasons. Probably the most pungent or the most important reason is because we do have very limited permanent housing options. We have a low inventory of housing, and we also have very high rent costs here, which makes it very difficult for people to find housing. Has that been the number one problem? What are the other factors that are behind the housing, the permanent housing shortage? Well, there's many different factors behind that, and I think it really comes down to the same factors that affect other parts of the country. We're seeing the same challenges in Los Angeles, the same challenges in San Francisco. Many western cities and metropolitan areas have a high cost of living and have very low housing inventory available, and in particular, very low housing inventory available for those that aren't making a huge income, and are low income, or even in a poverty rate. Does that mean here in Hawaii we just have more of those types of people who cannot afford having a home? Absolutely. We have many people that can't afford a home here. I think there's many professionals, and I think that we probably will have many people that are listening and watching right now that are thinking that they're just one paycheck away from losing their housing. So I think we have to just keep that in mind that it's expensive to live in Hawaii, but there are several other factors that contribute to us having that highest per capita rate, and some of those factors are not necessarily always working together to resolve the issue. So that's really where Partners in Care comes in. So how does Partners in Care address that issue, the permanent housing available to the inventory? What are the things, what are the steps you're taking with your partner organizations? Well, what we're doing is that we actually recently just submitted our Consolidated Application as a Community to HUD, which is the federal agency that provides us with the funding. That's housing and urban development. Exactly, housing and urban development. And it's a Continuum of Care competition in particular. So our Continuum of Care, Partners in Care, applied for a little bit over about $9.5 million in order to bring housing resources to our community. We prioritized permanent housing, where we said to the nonprofit agencies, we want to see proposals and projects where you're going to increase the permanent housing available to the community. Are there any particular segments of the island that require more attention, more help? Are there areas that tend to have more lack of permanent housing? Absolutely. We definitely have a lack of permanent housing downtown and in Waikiki. Those are some areas where there certainly is not a lot of inventory of affordable housing. I'm not sure that there's particular geographic areas of the island that we're focused particularly on, but there are different spots or different geographical areas on the island where there's different issues. We know on the Waianae coast, there's a large population of families. There's a large population of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. We find that we have a lot of chronic homeless downtown and in Chinatown that have been on the streets for many years. They tend to be single adults and people that you can pretty much spot easily, that it's been very difficult to connect them to services. Now, Jen, we've been talking about housing inventory. That seems more on a higher level of addressing the homelessness issue here. How about any sort of one-on-one advocacy, talking to and reaching out to the particular communities? Does your organization do that? We do. We work in collaboration with neighborhood groups. We work in collaboration, like I said, with nonprofit organizations that are working island-wide and statewide to resolve this issue. We work at a very high level where we're looking to increase that housing inventory, but we also work in a systems level. In particular, we're working very hard in our community to establish a coordinated entry system. That's where when a person is, when anybody is at risk of homelessness or anybody sees somebody at risk of homelessness, that they have a portal that they can enter, and that they're assured that when they go through that portal that they're going to receive help, they're going to receive the right kind of resources, and they're going to have a choice in the matter. When you mention that, do they, do our homeless feel that they can do that, or do we find that we have to go out and really hold a hand? Because we have mentioned, and you've mentioned, the chronic homeless. They may not want to do that, and how do you reach out to that particular population? And for our viewers, can you please define homeless and the chronic homeless? Absolutely. Homeless is somebody that's without a permanent resident. Chronic homeless is defined by HUD very, very narrowly, and that means that a person has been on the streets for a particular period of time, usually 12 months, or usually for a particular intervals within a 12-month period, and that person has a disability. And those other issues, such as a disability, again, to go back to what we were talking about, they might not want to reach out. And at what point does your advocacy, at what point does your outreach go out and try to help these people? Our outreach teams are out there daily, 24-7, 365 days, yes, very, very dedicated. And, you know, outreach is, it's very challenging with certain populations, and it may be one time that you reach somebody and you're able to connect them to services, and it may mean that you're going to have to touch that person a hundred times. It means developing a relationship, and most importantly, it means developing trust between the client and yourself. So these are volunteers that you have, staff volunteers? These are staff, and they're actually, they don't work for partners in care. Again, partners in care is a membership organization, but we have many different agencies that are members of partner, partners in care that are doing this outreach, like IHS, like Waikiki Health, many, many others, Mental Health Kukua, we have several great partners that are working so hard. So that means there are people like social workers, counselors, medical professionals, those types of folks who go out there to the community. Exactly. We have street outreach, and then of course we do have different outreach through different programs where we, where people get connected to services, such as through medical professionals. It may even be through public safety, but often people are connected to services that are homeless through street outreach by going to an emergency shelter, and also by calling a Loja United Ways 2-1-1 line. That's another portal to entry for services. Once again, they just call 2-1-1 on their phone. On their phone. And it connects them to the information line. It connects them to the information line. Is this a free call? It is a free call. All right. So 2-1-1, thank you, Loja United Way, and people can call that number, and they can connect with your partner organizations. Exactly. What has the response been to the coalition's work? The response has been great. We're really seeing some really impact areas because of us working collaborative as a community. I think one of those examples is with our veteran population. We actually saw a decrease here on Oahu of 12% last year in homeless veterans, and we're continually getting them housed very, very rapidly because we're working on a very, very intense collaboration with the city and the county and the VA and several non-profit organizations that are serving veterans and their families. Now, is the Veterans Administration part of this group? Are you working with them? They're absolutely a part of this group. The VA is certainly a partner as is HUD, as is the city and county, as is many of state agencies. Okay, and like you mentioned, veterans, those who are prior military, they're also part of this population as well, in addition to those who don't meet certain income levels. And you had mentioned earlier the one paycheck away people. Is that really an exaggeration, this one paycheck away? An idea or from what you've seen, are we that close or is anyone that close to finding themselves without a permanent home? Absolutely. I don't think that's an exaggeration at all. I think there's many people that are living paycheck to paycheck. And, you know, it's simply as getting sick. It's simply some unexpected of life event that can really just take you into a situation and put you at risk of homelessness. And does cost of living factor in? Absolutely. Is that one of the things that also make Hawaii the per capita homeless leader? Absolutely. That certainly contributes to us being that per capita leader. I mean, we all know what a carton of milk costs here. Are there ways to address that cost of living besides having more having more of permanent housing inventory? Are there other ways that we can look at our community and and address things like cost of living? I think so. I mean, certainly. And I think one thing that we're always trying to do when we reach out to people and find people that are at risk of homelessness or are homeless is we try to connect them to those mainstream services as well, you know, making sure that they can find the health care that they need, that they have the same educational opportunities that everybody has. So I think when you look at it from that respect, that's where you can really manage somebody's kind of trajectory in life. Now, Jen, can we talk more about that connecting resources and maybe more of the partner groups? Let's do that after the break. I'm Chris Laginaldo. You're watching Aloha United. We stand now. Listen to all the other wonderful hosts and shows we have here at Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha, I'm Kauai Lucas, host of Hawaii is my mainland here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 3 p.m. We address issues of importance for those of us who live here on the most isolated landmass on the planet. Please come join me Fridays at 3 p.m. Mahalo. Hi, I'm Kili Akina, president of the Grassroot Institute. I'd love you to join us every week Mondays at two o'clock p.m. for a Hanukako. Let's work together. We report every week on the good things going on in our state as well as the better things that can go on in the future. We have guests covering everything from the economy, the government and society. See you Mondays on a Hanukako at 2 o'clock p.m. Until then, I'm Kili Akina, Aloha. Welcome back to Aloha United. We stand. I'm your host Chris Laginaldo. And again, remember, you can join us here on Twitter at Think Tech H.I. Make sure to tweet us, use that handle and join the conversation. I'm continuing our conversation today with Jen Stosh, director of Partners in Care, where they are working together in a collaborative cross-sector approach to end homelessness here in Hawaii. Now, before the break, we were talking about connecting those who are homeless. And I've also heard the word houseless from people, from previous conversations that I've had, but those who are houseless or homeless. Sometimes they're not able to find themselves connected to basic resources, because this could be like health, schools, education. How do you address that? How do you connect people with that? Say they call the Aloha United Way to one one number and said, I need some medical help or I want to send my child to school. How would that work? Who in the group could help with that, Jen? Well, many partners can help with that. And the wonderful people at Aloha United Ways to one line are very, very skilled and trained in making sure that they connect people to the right resources. So it's a matter of listening to the needs of somebody and making sure that you're connecting them to where they need to be. And there's many partner organizations that specialize in serving certain populations. So we want to make sure that we get people to the right place. Again, that's really helpful that there's a group under this umbrella, under this collaboration, they can hit these different areas in which to address the populations. So again, they can call to one one and be connected. Correct. Absolutely. They can also, you know, call anybody that's providing street outreach, which are several nonprofit agencies in any emergency shelter as well can help. And you had mentioned IHS as part of this. IHS, Waikiki Health, Kalima Palama, U.S. Vets, Catholic Charities. We have so many amazing partners. And these amazing partners, they're just not names floating out there. There are people who have a long standing reputation that can come in and help address and help advocate and help with these services for people. Exactly. How important was it to have the these leading groups together going in one direction to help the homeless population? Very important. And that's primarily why the HEARTH Act, which is the act that kind of oversees all of this, which is a federal act, the federal mandate, which which mandates how we operate as a COC. But under the HEARTH Act, it requires that communities come together and that you have this kind of group of providers and stakeholders and government agencies that are talking to each other and collaborating with each other and making sure that the continuum of care is complete and there's no pucas, meaning everybody gets the services they need and nobody's left out in the cold. We don't have cold here, but some. It's relatively cold. Yes, yes, yes. But then again, in a real sense, being able to work together has its advantages, right? Yes, it has its advantages. Primarily for resource maximization, you want to make sure that we're efficiently allocating resources, not duplicating services, making sure that we have adequate resources to meet the needs of every population. Now that you can work together and that you're capable of coming together, what sort of initiatives are you striving for or trying to establish? Sure, we are actually, we're working right now on planning for our 2017 point in time count, which the community knows a lot about, which often people are very anxious to get that data. We want to do a really good job, a very comprehensive approach and get everybody involved. Could you let our audience know, just to summarize this, but a lot of people look to this information each year to do decision making or to analyze. Could you let us know about that? Yes. Well, the point in time count looks at one day in time and it's typically the last week of January where we go into the shelters and we try to reach all of our unsheltered homeless population and ask them where we're used to being on the night of and there's a certain night that's picked. So it only really assesses homelessness on one day of the year. So it doesn't really give us a clear picture. It's really a picture of that day. It's a picture of that day and we simply look at that year by year to see how we're doing. How useful is that data or that one one picture when you look at it over time? That it is useful, but it's useful if it's done within context. If we only look at the point in time data, that that isn't useful. But if we're looking at the point in time data in context of things like our housing inventory count and our services utilization report that's put out by the University of Hawaii, we have many different data sets each year that help define how we're doing as a community and resolving homelessness. So if we look at them combined, then it tells us a great story. But if we look at the amount of context, it might not provide valuable information. What else are you working on? We're also working on a very exciting opportunity with the federal government for something called the Youth Homeless Demonstration Project, where we're hoping to bring three million into our community in order to help us resolve youth homelessness in particular. And when I say youth, I'm talking in particular about unaccompanied minors. So those that are under the age of 24 who are not living with parents or family. Is that a is that a developing population here in Hawaii? Is that something that is becoming problematic? I wouldn't say it's becoming problematic. I would say it's been problematic. Yes. And I would say it's primarily because we're so limited in serving this population. We have limited we're limited in outreach primarily because youth are hard to find. And youth often don't want to be reached by outreach teams. And we also have very little housing opportunities for our minor unaccompanied youth. And they don't go into adult shelters. So you have to keep that in mind. There's very few housing options for homeless youth that are under the age of 18. So what have what have where have and what have the youth been doing? Well, Holly Keepa, we also have Waikiki Youth Outreach, which is down in Waikiki. There's several wonderful nonprofits, but there just aren't enough resources in the community. So we're coming together as a community collaboration to hopefully apply for this funding and put together a comprehensive plan to end youth homelessness by 2020. That's not that's not too far in the future. Not too far away. What are the what are the items that you need to work on to address that particular population? Well, this this particular funding opportunity calls us to ask our community to be innovative. So I think that is probably the primary thing that we're going to have to do to be successful with our youth population is we're going to have to come up with some innovative techniques and solutions that provide youth with choice and that connect them not only with housing resources, but with educational and employment opportunities. Would that entail working with community groups, having community meetings, reaching out in that fashion? Yes, that entails meeting with many different stakeholders, including the nonprofit community, child welfare, public safety and the schools and the Department of Education and getting involved with them and the public libraries. There's so many necessary partners to be involved if we're going to resolve this issue. Anything that our audience can jump into right now that would help this or any of the other projects, any other things that you're working on? What what what can our audience do? Well, our audience can always go to Partners in Care's website, which is www.partnersincareowahu.org, where you can find all kinds of information about what we're working on and find information and data about the homeless community and what's happening and informing themselves. They can also volunteer for the point in time count. We'll soon have information posted on our website about how people can get involved in assisting and doing the count in their community. They can join Partners in Care. We're an organization that's open to both organ organizations and individuals, so they can join Partners in Care and get involved. And we've been talking about youth homeless earlier, we were talking about the chronically homeless. What are their target populations? Do you need to look at what exactly is a target population for our audience? Sure. Well, a target population, and these are these are somewhat populations that have been defined by the the housing and urban development, the federal agencies. But these are particular populations that we need to come up with innovative and population specific strategies around coordinated entry around referral networks and around housing opportunities. And those those particular populations are youth, which we talked about chronic homeless families and veterans. I understand that coming up in, oh, my goodness, it's about what, six, six weeks away or so is the Statewide Homeless Awareness Conference. That's on November 16th. Can you tell us about that conference? Who is it targeted to and what what's going to happen there? Well, that's a wonderful opportunity for service providers and community members to come together and talk about what each other is doing at the time and to come away with some additional knowledge and skills about how to better be equipped to to handle things in their agencies and in their communities. It's a day long conference with many different tracks. We have a lot of information on our website, along with registration material and sponsorship opportunities. But it's a very exciting day to to learn about what's going on in our community and to be called to action to take that next step forward to resolving the issue. Where's the conference being held? It's going to be held at the Kroc Center. And that is in Ewa Beach. I believe so, yes. And that is the Salvation Army, right? Yes, exactly. Again, it's on November 16th and the information is on your website at partners and care Oahu dot org. Yes. I was going through that site earlier and you had mentioned there are a lot of resources there. You can you can download a lot of data. Why is it important for the common person? I mean, we have been talking about the homeless, youth homeless, chronic homeless. The regular citizen, why do we need to know about the population around us? If we don't understand the problem completely and we don't have the right information, it will be difficult for us as a community to resolve it. There's a lot of statistics and a lot of data that floats out there that we hear a lot about and some of it's true and some of it's not true and some of it's weighted more than other things are weighted. And I think we have to really make sure that we're informed about what's going on in our community. If we're informed, then we can make better decisions about how to resolve. And really that's important because again, we did speak a little earlier that because of cost of living and other factors and the availability of housing, anybody could find themselves in this situation. Absolutely, absolutely. Is it surprising when you go out there, when you go out with your partner groups and you meet our population? These are people, we say population, we say this group here, but when you meet these people, what strikes you when you go out into our community and meet these people? That these people want help. These people do not want to live on the streets. I often hear some say that they choose to live like this, that they don't try to help themselves for lack of a better way to say it. But I would say this, that I know for a fact that nobody that lives out on the streets, in their kindergarten career day, said when I grow up, I think I want to be homeless. That's not anybody's goal in life. It's something that happens to people by their circumstances and it can happen to any of us. I mean, it often happens with those that don't have the family connections and support that some people have. And you folks, I'm talking to Jen Stash, director of Partners in Care, you folks help connect people with those resources or give them a little bit of hope when they don't have it. Exactly. And help the providers do their job and make sure they have the funding that they need in order to provide the services to the community. John, I really do want to thank you today for coming in and letting us know about what Partners in Care does. Again, my name is Chris Aguinaldo. This is Aloha United. We stand here at Think Tech, Hawaii. And thank you for watching and Aloha.