I drove up the coast highway a little while ago to run some errands. This entailed passing numerous encampments of homeless folks. The same high wind that damaged my roof recently has knocked down or even destroyed quite a few of the tents. I'm pretty sure that most of those folks are going to have a hard time finding new shelter before the rainy season starts getting serious with us. We've had a few heavy rains just recently, but that will turn to monsoon-like downpours soon, sometimes lasting for days or weeks.

Some folks think that Hawaii is a pretty good place to be homeless. We don't have snow or even terribly cold weather, though it can be pretty chilly at night when you're in a tent right next to the ocean.

The wind is still blowing.

Labels: homelessness, life in Hawaii

So I was sitting in my office at the back of the house, enjoying the relatively quiet afternoon (compared to last night.) I'd heard a few stray leftover fireworks being shot off in the distance throughout the day, but none of them seemed to be nearby and they weren't bringing back last night's headache, so all was well. That was before a helicopter I had heard in the distance suddenly seemed like it was hovering right overhead. I tried to open the louvers in my office windows. I managed to pry them apart about an inch, but that wasn't enough for me to see through because the separate louvers were still overlapping too much. The office is the only air conditioned room in the house and the windows hadn't been opened in a while. The ocean air builds up salty, corrosive crustiness on aluminum, so the windows weren't being cooperative.

I still had my ladder set up for the ongoing carport roof coating, so I grabbed my camera and climbed up. The helicopter had left, but returned just as I stepped outside. I barely had time to turn the camera on before I saw this.




Yes, that's the roof of my house in the foreground. It blocks the view of the stream that runs out back. The fire department helicopter was using the stream to refill the suspended water bucket. I turned around to face the neighbors across the street from me. Their homes back up to the vacant government lot that I've mentioned as the frequent site of brushfires. From my carport roof I watched the copter make a wide circle and drop a load of water.



Circle again to to stream, fill the bucket, dump, circle back.



This went on for over an hour as the sky blackened with smoke.



You can't see the ash that flitted through the air or hear the smoke alarms going off all over the neighborhood, but they were there. Neighbors gathered in the street ...



Or climbed on top of their homes for a better view.



Keep in mind that this is not a new experience for us. Two homes were destroyed a few years back, and a dozen or so have had roof damage in recent years. Our homes were built in the early seventies and all originally had cedar shake roof coverings. Thirty years down the road many of them were extremely dry and would catch fire quite easily when burning cinders landed on them. Most of us have intalled fire-resistant asphalt shingles now, but there are still a few holdouts. Tell me again why we don't want the government to clear out the brush and keawe trees.



The logic escapes me. Oh, right, I remember. It's because we don't want those people living too close. If they build transitional apartments or affordable housing back there it might devalue our homes. Dozens of brush fires a year don't do that, of course.

The excitement finally ended and I got back to coating the roof.



I worked for about an hour and noticed storm clouds moving down from the mountains. The coating needs to dry for a day & will probably be ruined if it gets wet before tommorrow afternoon. Those storm clouds sure did look good, though. I can sacrifice an hour of work if it will saturate the keawe and brush. That would eliminate the possibility of flare-ups overnight. Not a bad trade-off.

Unfortunately, the rain hasn't fallen yet. I hear fireworks going off again up the street.

A note to parents: if you haven't policed the neighborhood yet for fireworks that didn't go off last night, maybe you should think about it. Unsupervised kids with fireworks can get into a lot of trouble, even if you don't have brushfires in your area. Just a thought.

**I took a lot of other pictures. Unfortunately, my camera got brain-scrambled on Christmas Day. Today was the first time I've used it since then. Most of the pictures I took are pixilated or have big blocks of color on them. You'll see some of that if you click to enlarge the picture of the roof coating. Fifteen were still in my camera when it decided to quit downloading. If I ever find a way to get them out, I may substitute some better pictures for the ones I have available to me now.

Labels: fire, fireworks, home, homelessness

I attended a Neighborhood Board meeting on Tuesday night. Neighborhood Board meetings are the equivalent of Town Hall Meetings that some communities have. Various officials share information with the community and then open up the floor for feedback. There were three items on Tuesday’s agenda. I’ve already forgotten what the first two were. They were dealt with in less than five minutes. The third item was what brought out a crowd. It was a discussion about the transitional housing community that is to be built abutting my own neighborhood, and the affordable housing that will be the next phase of the same development. The topic was guaranteed to bring out the NIMBYs, and it did.

I’m proud of my neighborhood and of most of the people who took advantage of this forum to educate themselves and to discuss their concerns. The NIMBYs were given little notice as we discussed the very real problems that this development will present. The main street leading to the development is in poor repair, too narrow and unsafe. The utilities (especially water and sewage) are in need of major upgrades. The elementary school is already overcrowded and its old buildings are deteriorating.

My neighbors want the city, county and state to complete corrections on all of the above before construction begins. That’s not an unreasonable stance to take, but it is not my view. Completion will take a lot of time. Meanwhile, we have hundreds of people living on the beaches, waiting for the slow wheels of government to grind. I believe that the various agencies involved can all work together to just get the job done. They can open up another entrance on the back side of the development for the heavy construction traffic, while detouring us to other available roads so that the main entry road can be repaired. Road maintenance can work with the utility departments to coordinate their upgrades. There are unused temporary buildings all over the island that can be brought in for the school to use until permanent new buildings can be built. I think they can do all of this, if they will. The gentleman who spoke to us at the meeting is the head of a special task force formed by the governor. The agencies who will be involved in the work have been ordered to coordinate with him, to give this task top priority. He is competent, and he is passionate about making this happen. Call me naïve, but I believe it can be done, if they all want it to. I don't think getting the work done is the biggest part of the problem. I think community aceptance is. We have it in our power to throw up roadblocks, or to help this dream become a reality.

After the meeting I spoke with Alice, one of the audience members who had spoken quite eloquently to the problems we are facing. Alice has lived on this coast for many years, and she's raised her family here. She’s still doing that, but can’t afford a house anymore. She and her family live in tents on the beach. She has graciously agreed to sit down and talk with me soon, and to introduce me to some of her neighbors on the beach. Alice does not describe herself as homeless. She has a place to stay, and family and friends around her. She describes herself as houseless. It’s a fine distinction, but it tells me that her current circumstances have not beaten her down or warped her priorities.

This is the introduction to what I hope will be a series of posts about the houseless people who are my neighbors. I think it’s important for folks to meet them and get to know them. I hope that by introducing them to others I can help win support for the changes that my community needs to face. We can live with a little inconvenience while this project is being developed. We must, for the good of our community. I don’t have a production schedule. I will continue to do other posts about other things. I still deal with depression and social anxiety disorder, so bear with me when I have bad days and can’t work on this project. But do come back. I want you to meet my neighbors.

Labels: homelessness, houseless, life in Hawaii, social responsibility