05-18-2017, 07:57 AM
Several days ago Honolulu media reported the rousting of 40 homeless campers living in the brush behind Plantation Village in Waipahu. It was revealed that--once again--the campers are disproportionately part-native Hawaiian.
Another article on the hundreds of homeless on Oahu’s Waianae coast reported that “a large number of them are native Hawaiians, and they don't want to go anywhere.”
This refers to them not wanting to leave their campsites. But it can also relate to a far more important topic: Given the increasingly high rents on Oahu (part of gentrification), will the natural outcome of poor people being shifted to other places repeat itself in Hawaii?
In the San Francisco Bay Area, one of just many examples, most poor minority people were pushed out of the city some 25 years ago to Oakland, across the bay. That city, once synonymous with “low income,” is now gentrifying. The displaced are going further east, some to agricultural cities like Fresno. Others relocate to the giant arc in our country from Mississippi north, where living is relatively cheap.
A significant number of mainlanders who come to Hawaii end up homeless. I see no problem with convincing these folks to get on a plane for a state with low rents. If our appeals--and free one-way plane tickets--do not work, persuasion might be needed, e.g., cut off of local public assistance benefits. (Yes, a different standard for local versus mainland people.) Or perhaps even more “persuasion.”
But pushing homeless native Hawaiians to the mainland? I don’t think so.
(Large numbers of native Hawaiians have relocated to Vegas and the Pacific Northwest in recent decades, but these are primarily folks with a stable work history and minimal social problems, e.g., drug dependency. Big difference.)
Two observations:
1) More and more homeless native Hawaiians (and other low income folks) from Oahu will be moving to east Hawaii Island.
2) History has taught us that having large numbers of marginalized and frustrated poor people causes problems. Crime. Strife. Revolution, even. (To facetiously quip a statement regularly used several centuries ago: “M’Lord, we are having trouble with the rabble again.”)
We can ignore all this if we wish, but the link between the plight of homeless native Hawaiians and the sovereignty movement seems clear. Locally, the discontent might also have some link to the native Hawaiian opposition to some development projects.
Another article on the hundreds of homeless on Oahu’s Waianae coast reported that “a large number of them are native Hawaiians, and they don't want to go anywhere.”
This refers to them not wanting to leave their campsites. But it can also relate to a far more important topic: Given the increasingly high rents on Oahu (part of gentrification), will the natural outcome of poor people being shifted to other places repeat itself in Hawaii?
In the San Francisco Bay Area, one of just many examples, most poor minority people were pushed out of the city some 25 years ago to Oakland, across the bay. That city, once synonymous with “low income,” is now gentrifying. The displaced are going further east, some to agricultural cities like Fresno. Others relocate to the giant arc in our country from Mississippi north, where living is relatively cheap.
A significant number of mainlanders who come to Hawaii end up homeless. I see no problem with convincing these folks to get on a plane for a state with low rents. If our appeals--and free one-way plane tickets--do not work, persuasion might be needed, e.g., cut off of local public assistance benefits. (Yes, a different standard for local versus mainland people.) Or perhaps even more “persuasion.”
But pushing homeless native Hawaiians to the mainland? I don’t think so.
(Large numbers of native Hawaiians have relocated to Vegas and the Pacific Northwest in recent decades, but these are primarily folks with a stable work history and minimal social problems, e.g., drug dependency. Big difference.)
Two observations:
1) More and more homeless native Hawaiians (and other low income folks) from Oahu will be moving to east Hawaii Island.
2) History has taught us that having large numbers of marginalized and frustrated poor people causes problems. Crime. Strife. Revolution, even. (To facetiously quip a statement regularly used several centuries ago: “M’Lord, we are having trouble with the rabble again.”)
We can ignore all this if we wish, but the link between the plight of homeless native Hawaiians and the sovereignty movement seems clear. Locally, the discontent might also have some link to the native Hawaiian opposition to some development projects.
