The housing units within Kumu Ola Hou — a new transitional shelter set to open next week in Iwilei — are small but cozy, constructed with unstained wood. Like most homes, each unit has beds. Doors that close and windows that open. A small patch of green grass outside the door and a lānai. Unlike most homes, though, the units are located indoors.
The Kumu Ola Hou Iwilei Transitional Shelter is a collaboration between the city, which owns the Iwilei Center where the shelter is located, and the state, which is providing funding to the Institute for Human Services to manage the facility.
The shelter is the first of four set to open within Iwilei Center, which the City and County of Honolulu acquired for affordable housing a little more than a year ago and will use as a transitional shelter before the property is redeveloped.
The city says this new facility — which has 13 units with a capacity of 24 residents — prioritizes brain and behavioral health "through healing-centered architecture and a trauma-sensitive environment that fosters recovery," especially for homeless individuals who have a history of challenges with mental health, memory or brain injuries.
According to the city, the facility will use therapeutic activities for residents that are designed to address trauma. And in partnership with the Brain Health Applied Research Institute, Kumu Ola Hou will focus on "restoring brain function and helping residents improve their cognitive abilities through new experiences and new environments."
The shelter also includes a common room, bathrooms, a laundry room and shared communal spaces.
A blessing ceremony for the facility was held Thursday.
"There's a fundamental truth that I'm hoping people are coming to understand, and that is housing is health care," Gov. Josh Green told the crowd. "When you provide housing, when you provide a safe space ... when you provide that shelter and that comfort that you will not be in harm's way on the streets, you can heal. You can avoid going to the hospital. You can avoid the traumas that are around every corner. That's what this is about."
Green, a physician, said this differs from a "traditional kauhale," or a small village of tiny homes.
"This program is predicated on very deep thinking about neuroscience," he said, noting that chronic homelessness disrupts brain function.
Referred to as "compassionate housing," Green said this is a model based on neuroscience to "help decrease the stresses and to bring people back to some sense of normalcy."
Green told Aloha State Daily after the blessing that a new type of kauhale focused on people's neurologic health is "smart."
"There are a lot of people that you see in the streets, we all do, that need this kind of support precisely," he said. "This is going to harm-reduce their state of living and it's going to help a lot in society. If an individual who would get services here is on the street, they are the very individual that could be most at risk for a tragic moment."
Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi told the crowd he wants to be "as aggressive as we can in tackling our homeless challenge. ... We're too good as a people to let people suffer around us like this."
For Amanda Ybanez, chair of Neighborhood Board No. 15 Kalihi-Pālama, which encompasses the Iwilei area, new shelter space can't come fast enough.
She told Aloha State Daily before a blessing ceremony Thursday that in the 1970s, she remembers two homeless individuals in the same area.
"Fast forward to today, there's hundreds and hundreds of people with complex co-morbidities, substance abuse, mental illness ... just a very wide swath of complex social issues that affect people every single day, and they're out on the streets and they need to have the help in order to get back into society and become functional," Ybanez said. "So this right here, to me, is a triage area, where people can come in, get the mental health assessments, psychiatric assessments, physical health assessments. They really have professional eyes on them to see what kind of help that they need, and have social workers on staff and professional nursing on staff and [police] on staff to be here to best service people. Again, the goal is to get people back into society."
Shelter Manager Timothy Johnson, with IHS, told ASD that everything about the shelter, from the unstained wood to the smell, is "very calming."
"So the people that we have with traumatic brain injury, PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], all forms of trauma, this is the place to heal and I'm so happy to be a part of this, especially with the staff we have coming on," he said. "Everybody truly cares and wants to be here."
Johnson said this is something that's "desperately" needed in the area.
The city acquired Iwilei Center for $51.5 million a little more than a year ago and it plans to open three additional shelters in the complex by the summer. Including Kumu Ola Hou, there will be approximately 100 beds to service homeless individuals, the city said in an announcement. IHS will manage a second shelter and two will be managed by Mental Health Kōkua, according to the city.
Stephanie Salmons can be reached at stephanie@alohastatedaily.com.
