Report Calls for Comprehensive Plan To Eliminate Homelessness in Maui

“Maui’s Cost of Government Commission, a nine-member group tasked with looking for ways to make the county government more effective, recently released a 559-page report looking at ways Maui could end homelessness and ensure that anyone who loses their housing can get into a shelter.” 

According to reporting by Marina Starleaf Riker for Honolulu Civil Beat, “Among their key findings: despite sharing a common goal that one day, no Maui residents will have to live on the street, there’s ‘persistent disagreement’ among the organizations working to help them, and no one has a comprehensive plan on how to do that work either.”

Maui, like many communities across the continental U.S., has watched in recent decades as the presence of people living on streets has become increasingly visible. The phenomenon, experts say, can be blamed on decades of policy decisions and the economic consequences that followed: slashing funding for federal housing programs, the lack of investment in mental and physical health care, mass incarceration, soaring housing prices and stagnant wages for the working class.

The report acknowledges the county’s need for external advice. “The report’s main suggestion: Use county dollars to hire an expert to come up with a plan to end homelessness, similar to how the county just spent roughly $300,000 on a consultant to examine ways to build more affordable housing.”