WORKING HOMELESS CAN'T AFFORD HOUSING IN HAWAI`I
Land Costs Five Times US National Average
The Wall Street Journal - January 11, 2007
WAIANAE, Hawai`i - Rising before dawn, Patrick Wong walks 45 minutes to his drugstore job in Kapolei, a suburban town 20 miles west of Honolulu, where he stocks shelves starting at 7 a.m.
The post pays $8.25 an hour and offers health insurance for Mr. Wong, his wife and partially deaf toddler.
But Mr. Wong, 33 years old, and his family can't afford a place to live.
Five months ago they left his mother's home, where he was paying $600 a month in rent.
Faced with the steepest rents of any state and scant available public housing, they were forced to join Hawai`i's swelling homeless ranks.
Roughly 6,000 people in the state are without permanent shelter, according to Hawai`i's Homeless Programs Division.
That's nearly double the number without homes in 1999.
Increasingly, this population consists of working families with children.
Some, like the Wongs, live in city-run shelters. Others have taken up residence on the beach, turning Hawai`i's picturesque shores into homeless encampments where hundreds of people live in tents pitched on the sand.
One big factor behind Hawai`i's homelessness is the housing boom that swept across the U.S.
Run-ups in home prices displaced families nationwide, but the problem in Hawai`i - where land costs are more than five times the national average - is particularly acute.
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20070112-morales.html
