City CORE team vows to continue tackling homelessness on the North Shore

The city’s team of emergency medical technicians and homeless outreach workers returned to Wahiawa and the North Shore last week, met a dozen homeless people and vowed to keep coming back to provide first aid, wound care, social services, shelters and, eventually, stable housing. if not permanent housing.

10 EMTs and local health workers from CORE—or the city’s Department of Emergency Services’ Crisis Response and Engagement Program—arrived at Haleiwa’s small boat harbor in refurbished ambulances and a repurposed city bus, wearing matching red CORE T-shirts and bringing with them themselves along with plenty of cold bottled water to break the ice with the homeless people they met.

John Kanaulu, director of field operations for CORE, estimates that there are between 600 and 700 homeless people living on the North Shore alone, not counting Wahiawa, many of whom grew up on the North Shore only to end up homeless for years, often and decades.

CORE teams began their work in December 2021, first working with homeless people in downtown, Chinatown and Waikiki, and then expanding less frequently to Windward, central Oahu, and the west and north coasts.

About half of the people they met on Oahu reported being “chronically homeless,” meaning they had lived on the street for long periods of time or repeatedly, often with common themes of mental illness and substance abuse.

Over the summer, teams began visiting the North Shore more regularly to build stronger relationships with the homeless people they encounter, with the goal of gaining their trust and getting them off the streets.

They hope to return weekly.

CORE teams found a very different, wary population on Oahu’s west and north coasts compared to the people they encountered in urban Honolulu.

Overall, CORE staff say, homeless people in the city are much more willing to accept services and shelter, and share their medical history and personal information, compared to people they meet on the North Shore, where there are no homeless shelters. there is less support, and homeless people are much more careful about their personal information.

Homeless people in Wahiawa, North Shore and Leeward Oahu are accustomed to living on their own, in vehicles or in public spaces, often for years, CORE staff told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser during a trip to North Shore and Wahiawa last week.

None of the homeless people the CORE team met accepted CORE’s invitation to board a bus and move to a shelter in the city or a so-called medical respite facility for people with serious medical needs.

On the island of Oahu, the average life expectancy of a homeless person is only 53 years.

Like people living in other homeless communities on Oahu, no one wanted to leave the place they had lived for years, if not their entire lives, even if it meant getting off the streets where they could work with social workers on recovery plans. their life.

Few revealed much of their personal information to the CORE team, including their last names and ages.

One woman named Lana, who has a small, friendly, cream-colored dog, agreed to bottled water and emergency services to treat and bandage both of her arms after she was attacked by another dog.

She also welcomed CORE’s offer to help renew her expired driver’s license.

But Lana told CORE workers that she would not move into the shelter because none of them would allow her to bring her dog, which is not true.

She also declined to give her last name to CORE or the Star-Advertiser.

No one at CORE confronted Lana about her misperception of the pets accepted at some homeless shelters on Oahu, even though they are located more than an hour’s drive from the North Shore.

But none of the CORE emergency physicians or local health care workers were discouraged when others they met, like Lana, rejected their offers of shelter, transitional medical housing, or even long-term housing opportunities.

Several CORE employees told the Star-Advertiser during a recent visit to the North Shore that trust — and progress — requires patience and more frequent follow-up visits to help meet needs beyond wound care and water, such as giving homeless people access to government funding assistance they are entitled to receive government identification cards needed for work and housing.

“Everyone needs everything in the city,” said EMT Carlo Menezes. “They don’t ask for much help on the North Shore. It’s a matter of trust. They don’t know us. They don’t know what we’re going to do to help them.”

A group of six returning tourists from Dallas and Nashville, Tenn., saw the CORE team working with Lana and other homeless people on a patch of grass behind Haleiwa Joe’s restaurant at Haleiwa’s small boat harbor and applauded the city’s multifaceted work to combat homelessness.

They had just completed a non-certified scuba dive with North Shore sharks on their latest visit to Oahu, where they were staying in Waikiki, and were accustomed to seeing homeless encampments all the way from Daniel K. Inouye International Airport to Waikiki and beyond. North Shore.

“We have a lot of them in Texas,” said 25-year-old Randall Gerry. “They all need help.”

Menezes and other CORE employees then responded to a call that a woman, who appeared to be at least 70 years old, had fallen while living next door to the harbor at Haleiwa Ali Beach Park.

When they arrived, an elderly woman with long gray hair who gave only her first name, Carol, was sitting in a new wheelchair at a picnic table on the grass.

Carol said she was evicted earlier this week, fell after moving to Aaliyah Beach Park and injured her left leg. She said someone then bought her a wheelchair, which she used.

She allowed paramedics to examine her leg and welcomed the CORE women’s offer to take her to the park bathroom to relieve herself and help her shower, where they could also further evaluate other possible injuries.

They then provided Carol with fresh clothes. But she refused to provide any further information, including her age, and said she would not leave the North Shore and would prefer to remain homeless at Aaliyah Beach Park, where several other people appeared to be living in their cars.

The only downside, Carol told the CORE team, was that her spot at the picnic table was drenched by the park’s sprinklers every night.

Another group of CORE members later encountered a handful of homeless people living in their cars at nearby Kayaka Bay Beach Park, including Willie Ramirez, 54, who grew up on the North Shore and now lives in a Toyota faded by age and sun.

“Uncle Willie,” as CORE members began calling him, told them he had diabetes, so the emergency room doctor pricked his finger and told Ramirez he had low blood sugar.

They gave Ramirez a liquid dose of dextrose, which quickly revived him.

After being examined and offered a bed at a shelter, Ramirez said, “Maybe if it’s around here.”

Asked how long he had been homeless, Ramirez told the Star-Advertiser: “It’s been a long time.”

Public works specialist Elijah Galuan was encouraged that Ramirez didn’t immediately rule out moving his Toyota into the shelter.

Like his CORE teammate Menezes, Galuan said the key to success will be gaining the trust of homeless people living on the North Shore.

“We just need to build more understanding,” Galuan said. “That’s a good thing about CORE. We keep coming back.”

EMS Director James Ireland said Mayor Rick Blangiardi continues to look for a site on the North Shore to team up with government and nonprofit groups to create another Kauhale community of tiny homes where homeless people can live and receive social assistance with other homeless people from the North Shore. .

Overall, unlike some other homeless encampments in other parts of Oahu, on the North Shore, “often people have lived in Hawaii their entire lives and have deep connections with friends and family, but they have grown apart, perhaps due to mental health and addiction. Therefore, they depend on each other for emotional support. And they are extremely resistant to the transfer of any aid, mainly located in Ivilei. So we need to find a solution to the problem of homelessness on the North Shore.”

CORE staff continue to build a database of all the homeless people they encounter on Oahu, including on the North Shore, to learn more “about what their problems are and what treatment they need,” Ireland said.

Getting them off the streets and getting the help they need will benefit everyone, he said.

“No. 1, people are suffering, there are public sanitation and public safety issues,” Ireland said. “And at the end of the day, people have a right to be safe in their neighborhoods, in their parks and on their beaches.”