EDITORIAL| OUR VIEW
Get families in housing, ASAP March 29, 2018 Updated March 29, 2018 12:05am
It seems simplistic to suggest that the cure to homelessness is housing. It is simplistic — there are often complex social and physical ailments that start the downward spiral into homelessness that must be addressed, or the rescued person or household ends up back on the streets again. It’s not entirely wrong, though. Getting people off the streets and housed as quickly as possible — or preventing them from falling into homelessness to begin with — is the most powerful first step in the recovery process. You can see it in the faces of children who, with their families, are the targets of a private program called HousingASAP, first organized by Hawaii Community Foundation three years ago. The program has a video posted online that sheds light on its work, including the statistic that 714 Hawaii families have been moved off the street in 2-1/2 years. In the recent Hawaii Poll conducted for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 42 percent of 800 people surveyed said they think homelessness has grown worse over the past year. At a time when at least the public perception has grown dimmer, the brighter outlook of HousingASAP’s encouraging success is welcome. The approach adopts the basic philosophy of the pre-eminent Housing First program. This means placing the priority on getting people to stable housing where they can feel secure from the crime on the streets and from being dispersed, their possessions scattered, by the authorities. But it leverages the collected knowledge of its entire coalition to help speed the relocation of families through cooperative networking. The association, which this year