Homeless in Hawaii

Sand Island is probably the perfect place for the homeless.

It makes a whole lot of sense rather than the previous governor's plan to relocate Waikiki to Sand Island.

Obviously, that was a mistake. Sand Island is perfect logistically -- close to all the social service agencies and nobody else wants to be there. It's already a campground at the end there -- with showers and bathrooms.

They could put aside some land for the homeless to grow their own food or steward the land, and make something out of that place. I'm not just for putting the homeless there so they can trash it. I think they could create a viable community and lifestyle out there.

It shouldn't be a place that is lawless and without rules. The residents are going to have to make some -- and become socialized and human again. That's the worst part of homelessness -- is that there is no community and all those people are living in isolation from one another.

I have nothing against the camping lifestyle -- as a way of living -- but it should be a superior adaptation than the dregs of homelessness and despair. All that kind of survivalist lifestyle -- camping, hiking, bicycling, farming, fishing -- can be done at the highest end of human ingenuity, as many are doing already.

Many of these people realize that if they used their disability checks on rent, they'd have nothing to live on. So instead of paying rent, they use that money for things so they can live a meaningful existence otherwise. You don't need a mansion in Kahala or Diamond Head. A tent will do -- as long as you have a viable community, which they need to develop, and in doing so, the homeless won't be a problem in Hawaii anymore but may actually be the answer to a people that don't know how to create any value but begging from the federal government for handouts.

It’s not healthy for any society/community to have lost its sense of self-reliance as Hawaii has and become totally dependent on other cultures and societies to provide everything for them -- while they lose that connection that the reason there is the present abundance is that somebody saw the need for it and created it with whatever they had to work with. Those are sustainable and viable societies -- and not just chanting in the old ways and remembering traditions of the past, to remain in the past. There are problems that can be solved in their present living -- if they are allowed to do so, unbound by the suffocating tradition of conformity to the old and conventional.

It takes a fairly high degree of resourcefulness to be “homeless,” but they shouldn’t be wasting all that resourcefulness just in preventing themselves from being wiped out by the mainstream culture, as is the emphasis right now. In many areas of the world, the nomadic lifestyle is respected in that way. Not everybody should be required to buy an overpriced house just to remain on the island.