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Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"This dog had to make the hardest decision of his life..."}]

Smile 26 6 12

<title>Daily Smile: Friday, June 12, 2026</title>

This dog had to make the hardest decision of his life...

Daily Smile: Friday, June 12, 2026

 This dog had to make the hardest decision of his life...

Hawai'i Skies

Today's Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Barbra. "

Good morning, this picture doesn’t do justice to colors of this rainbow. It felt amazing, it was so big!  Beautiful start to Aloha Friday!"

To submit your Hawai'i Skies photo, visit us 

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

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<title>Hawaiʻi Skies: Aloha Friday</title>

Today's Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Barbra.

Hawaiʻi Skies: Aloha Friday

Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros Headshot

Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros

Aloha Spirit

Government & Politics

Young children — keiki under age 5 — are a significant part of the overall homelessness challenge in Hawai

ʻi, according to Family Promise of Hawaiʻi Executive Director Ryan Catalani.

, (PITC) a federally mandated census conducted by Partners in Care and more than 300 volunteers on Jan. 26, the report identified 4,539 individuals “experiencing homelessness in [Oʻahu] shelters, streets, beaches, cars, or other places not meant for human habitation.”

Of that total count experiencing homelessness, 802 were children under age 18, per the report, which also noted that since 2022, family homelessness has increased by 43%, and nearly 20% between 2024 to 2026.

“One of the most striking findings was that child and family homelessness on Oʻahu has increased so dramatically in the last two years, while overall homelessness remained virtually flat,” Catalani said. “I think it is shocking and concerning to see this on the community level.”

He added that Family Promise of Hawaiʻi, which is a member of Partners in Care, has noticed internally an increase in calls for its services such as interim housing, emergency rental assistance, case management, and more. Monthly, the organization receives around 200 to 300 first time callers per month, Catalani said. According to its website, the nonprofit represents approximately 500 families, or 1,700 individuals, each year on both Oʻahu and Maui.

“I was looking at our data from the month of January, since the count is just one point-in-time, and 66 unique families, or 265 individuals, called who were unsheltered,” he said. “It’s important for people to realize that the PIT count is who can be seen on that one day, and that there’s more need than we can capture in just this report.”

According to recent data from the state Department of Education, 4,800 school-aged students are experiencing homelessness, and another 750 from birth to age 5. 

Federal data shows that “an estimated 1 in 30 young children in Hawai

i experience homelessness annually,” per 

Catalani notes that “there are about 140 families who are eligible for our emergency shelter, but there is not enough space for them.” Currently across its interim housing locations, Family Promise of Hawaiʻi can accommodate 30 families, or 120 individuals.

To meet the increased needs of the community, he aims to “continue to scale [the nonprofit’s] programs to serve more families.”

, which launched in December 2024, has been a successful model that offers spaces specifically designed for families, according to Catalani.

“We use the term interim housing instead of shelter or transitional housing because what we offer is a little different,” he said. “Each family has their own room and bathrooms, with shared kitchen spaces, common areas, laundry and other amenities on site. There are also case management offices on site and spaces for community partners who provide meals, activities with the families and kids, and wraparound services.”

One ongoing challenge, however, is finding more facilities on the island to help build capacity.

Babies and toddlers should not be sleeping on the streets, especially 

during the ages in which their brains are developing most rapidly. Those early experiences are going to have the biggest impact on the rest of their lives,” Catalani said. “I think that if we truly want to end homelessness as a community, we need to make sure that young children are being stably housed to create that generational change.”

Everyone can play a role in ending childhood homelessness.”

Meanwhile on Maui, Family Promise of Hawaiʻi has remained focused on helping survivors of the 2023 wildfires. Since then, its case management team has served more than 800 families in need of shelter and housing, insurance and financial assistance, and with long-term rebuilding.

Most recently, the organization’s experience in disaster services on Maui were carried over to Oʻahu, which in some areas were devastated by Kona Low storms earlier this year. So far, 80 families displaced by flooding received support via a free temporary shelter program in partnership with the 

Waikīkī Malia hotel, as well as in-kind donations and other resources.

We wanted to find a way to more rapidly scale up with the influx of need after the storms,” Catalani said. “So, we provided some on site assistance at the shelters, in addition to supplies, air mattresses, etc. Our team also went to several of the city

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"State of the sector"}]

joined the Hawaiʻi Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations board of directors last year, also shared his thoughts about its newly released 

State of the Sector Report: “The View From Here: Insights from Hawai‘i Nonprofits.”

While the report highlights key issues the industry is facing, it also shares opportunities to help address capacity gaps, funding reform and more in the years ahead. Read more insights from HANO President and CEO Melissa Miyashiro 

“There’s a lot that resonated with the report. One observation I keep thinking about is that what nonprofits provide is central to community infrastructure, and yet from a funding perspective, it is often treated like a one-time project. Hopefully, as a community, we can think about ways to treat these essential nonprofits as core infrastructure and not as special projects.”

Cost of living is also a sore spot for the local sector.

“On the flip side, for a nonprofit whose budget is tight or if they’re losing funding, how can they 

support their own staff and be able to both recruit and retain the level of talent needed to address some of our community’s most important challenges, for example those dealing with economic or social service issues?” Catalani said.

With more than 30 employees, Family Promise of Hawa

iʻi became the first nonprofit in Hawaiʻi to receive a national certification from Living Wage for Us.

“We’ve also invested in benefits including 

paid time off and paid medical leave, as well as stipends for professional development and higher education,” Catalani said. “We want to create a place where people can stay employed with our organization because everyone is going to have some sort of medical or caregiving need in their lives.”

For more information about Family Promise of Hawaiʻi, 

HH2602 AY Family Promise 5908

<title>Nonprofit aims to scale programs to serve more ʻohana</title>

Family Promise of Hawaiʻi Executive Director Ryan Catalani discusses findings from the most recent Point in Time Count and how the organization serving families on Oʻahu and Maui plans to be part of the solution to end homelessness.

Nonprofit aims to scale programs to serve more ʻohana

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Columnists

In the movie “Groundhog Day,” Bill Murray wakes every morning to the same radio jingle, the same snowdrifts, the same February 2. The film came to mind on June 9, when Maui County announced a Council briefing on the rewrite of its zoning code, coming up on June 17.

 headline calls the presentation an “update.” But two paragraphs down, Planning Director Jacky Takakura calls it “the beginning of an important, multiyear effort” to create a new zoning code. An update and a beginning are different things, and the difference here is six years of public money.

Title 19 is the body of law that decides what may be built on Maui and where. The current version was written for another era, with its last overhaul in 1960. It requires the pattern of a Mainland subdivision: one house, one large lot, repeat until the land runs out. It leaves little room for gentle density — the ʻohana units, duplexes, and townhomes that let working families live near where they work.

Every year that the old code stands, housing on Maui grows scarcer and pricier. Reformers have said this 

. The County agreed. In 2018, it published an 

 that showed the code was out of date. In 2019, it hired the audit’s author — Orion Planning + Design — to rewrite the code.

The project’s website promised “an anticipated six-year timeline” with seven phases, finishing in 2026. That year is here. The final code should be done by now, with a plan to put it in place soon after.

The County hired a consulting team it advertises as among the most experienced in the country. Orion Planning + Design leads it, joined by PBR Hawaiʻi, Rundell Ernstberger Associates, and the law firm Carlsmith Ball, whose listed duties include “presentations to officials.”

 page today — the page built to hold the finished work. Under Draft Documents: coming soon. Under Draft Ordinances: coming soon. Under Adopted Ordinances: coming soon.

The old schedule has fared worse. The site’s menu no longer links to it. The page survives for anyone who kept the 

In “50 First Dates,” Drew Barrymore wakes each morning with no memory of the day before. Adam Sandler keeps a videotape and replays it for her at breakfast. The archive is our videotape. Somebody has to remember.

There are reasons for delay, and good ones too. The pandemic arrived almost as soon as the work began, and then came the fire. Zoning changes move slowly everywhere, even without disaster striking. All of this is true.

But the rest of the county worked through both disasters. County employees even collected 

 for work during the pandemic. We can forgive a delay when it comes with an accounting. But this press release offers no accounting. It offers a rebranded beginning, as if the first six years were a dream from which we are all now waking.

The release promises that “no new zoning code content will be presented at this time.” Six years of consultant work, it seems, has produced no content.

We should read this charitably. Surely no one who works for Mayor Bissen, and no member of the County Council, has seen draft code chapters and decided the public shouldn’t. That would be unthinkable.

The charitable reading is merely that six years of consultant invoices and staff hours have produced nothing fit to show. Whichever it is, the paperwork exists.

None of this requires a scandal to fix. It requires basic stewardship — the kind expected of anyone managing someone else’s money. Publish whatever drafts exist, today, on the page built for it. Set a public deadline on a website that stays put, where anyone can check it. And put a name on the project: Planning Director Takakura, or whomever the Mayor chooses. Hold them to account for meeting deadlines.

The Council’s Housing and Land Use Committee should open the June 17 meeting by asking what was spent, what was produced, and where it is.

Bill Murray does not escape February 2 by waiting. The loop breaks the morning he becomes a different man. Maui County has been waking to the same morning for six years. The radio is playing the same song: an important effort is beginning, and the community will be a partner. June 17 is Maui’s chance to wake up to February 3.

Maui neighborhood

<title>Coming soon, for six years</title>

Maui County promised a new zoning code on a six-year timeline, notes ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa. The six years are up, the website says “coming soon,” and the County is calling for a fresh start.

Coming soon, for six years

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

With the Waimānalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill about two years away from its planned closure, a proposed replacement site near Makakilo is no longer on the table.

 — a capital improvement budget bill for the 2027 fiscal year — last week, it did not include funding for a planned landfill to be built at Makaiwa Hills. This effectively has killed the project, the City and County’s Department of Environmental Services confirmed to Aloha State Daily.

Mayor Rick Blangiardi has consistently maintained that he does not support locating another landfill 

ʻahu and communicated that position to [site owner] Campbell Estates several weeks ago

,” an ENV spokesperson told ASD. “ENV and the Blangiardi administration will continue evaluating long-term solid waste disposal options.”

What those options might be is unclear. ENV director Roger Babcock Jr. 

 that the Makaiwa Hills site was the only location on the island where a landfill can be built under current laws: restrictions against building landfills within 10,000 feet of airport runways, within tsunami evacuation zones, on federal lands, over protected aquifers, near schools, hospitals, or residential areas had limited the potential locations for a future landfill to a small area west of Makakilo.

With that location now off the table, the future of waste management on O‘ahu is uncertain. Nonetheless, ENV’s long-term waste disposal plans still require a new municipal landfill.

While the city continues to pursue waste reduction, recycling, and emerging technologies, a municipal landfill 

ʻahu's solid waste system, making it essential that a responsible, long-term disposal solution be identified,” the ENV spokesperson told ASD.

The only operational landfill on O‘ahu, the Waimānalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill, can only operate until mid-2028 under its current special use permit. While that permit can be extended, Babcock previously told ASD that, at current waste production rates, the landfill will reach capacity by 2031.

Babcock has suggested that possible options for diverting waste streams from landfills could include recycling ash from the H-POWER trash incinerator — the primary waste deposited at Waimānalo Gulch — into raw materials such as asphalt, which could prolong the operational life of the landfill. Other possibilities include more robust recycling programs, or potentially “mining” the landfill to recycle previously buried waste.

On the other hand, Makakilo Councilwoman Andria Tupola called the council’s decision “a victory for West O‘ahu” last week, saying that “our communities should not be expected to carry another generation of O‘ahu’s waste burden.”

 a resolution to the council this year establishing an “End Landfills Task Force” that would identify other long-term waste strategies that don’t rely on landfills. That task force will develop a transition plan for the county by November 2027.

“Until we start turning waste into resources, every landfill is a policy failure,” Tupola said.

Screenshot 2026 04 21 at 3 03 12 PM 16x9

<title>West O‘ahu landfill no longer in the works</title>

Makaiwa Hills landfill goes unfunded in county capital improvement budget.

West O‘ahu landfill no longer in the works

Katie Helland Headshot

Katie Helland

Arts & Entertainment

Shangri La, a Center for Cultures & Ideas and Museum of Islamic Art has announced its latest cohort of six Kanaka Maoli artists who will participate in Wehiwehi, its artist residency program, this month. The artist residency program is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation’s Technologies and Performing Arts initiative.

For Kealoha Ferreira, a Kanaka Maoli, Filipino and Chinese dancer living in the diaspora, it is a chance to take her work back home to Oʻahu.

Ferreira grew up in Nuʻuanu. Now, she is a dancer and educator who teaches 

, a transnational feminist contemporary dance method that combines classical Indian dance form Odissi, along with Vinyasa Yoga and the martial art form Chhau. In 2024, she was named a 

, a prestigious honor for Minnesota choreographers and dancers, that comes with a $25,000 award that “can help an artist set aside periods of time for study, reflection, experimentation and exploration,” 

artistic associate of Ananya Dance Theatre

Participants of the Wehiwehi artist residency program will participate in showcases at Bishop Museum on Friday, June 19, and Shangri La on Saturday, June 27. 

“This residency is a really special opportunity, both to connect with Kanaka Maoli artists and to sharpen and cultivate our artistic sensibilities,” Ferreira said. “But for me and other folks who maybe find themselves in diaspora, it’s an opportunity to really share who we are now — and who we are becoming — with the places that raised us and that we still are connected to. We don't always have the opportunity to show up in those ways.”

Ferreira is not able to participate in the showcase at Shangri La but she is looking forward to the one at the Bishop Museum. The mana of the design and artifacts there is “just so palpable,” she said.

“Who you're with that’s beyond human, and also who you're with that's beyond the present moment, right?” she said. “Because it's things from the past, but also these things from ʻthe past’ are still steering our imagination, still steering our future, and offering us so much inspiration with their continued existence.”

The residency runs from June 17 to June 27 and will take place at Shangri La, a former home of Doris Duke, which has iconic ocean views in Kāhala. The group has already met once via Zoom and will soon be meeting in person.

“I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to connect with this amazing group of artists who are diverse in discipline and also really rooted and really grounded in a sense of identity and purpose,” she said. “There's a lot of alignment in that sense of desire to perpetuate love and life and culture, but there's also a lot of difference and diversity in how we do that and the esthetics that we utilize.”

Ferreira is looking forward to seeing what the cohort creates together.

“Whenever there's a group of really amazing people who intentionally gather in the room to make work together, there's unexpected kinds of inspiration that always lands,” she said. “So, I'm also really looking forward to the things that happen that cannot be planned — and are unknown in this moment — but that you know is going to happen because kūpuna and ancestors and inspiration love a group of mischievous artistic people.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Here is how to attend the showcases:"}]

Wehiwehi Artist Showcase at Bishop Museum  

Admission is free and includes food and beverages. 

Wehiwehi Residency Performance at Shangri La 

Tickets are $50 and includes food and beverages.

Kealoha Ferreira

<title>Dancer in diaspora brings art home to Oʻahu</title>

Wehiwehi is an artist residency program that is bringing six Kanaka Maoli artists from Hawaiʻi and the Mainland together to collaborate on hula, mele, modern dance, theater and more. These artists will share their work in showcases at Shangri La and the Bishop Museum in June. Kealoha Ferreira is one of the artists living in the diaspora, who will return to Oʻahu this month to participate in the program.

Daily Smile: Friday, June 12, 2026

ASD Staff

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Daily Smile: Friday, June 12, 2026

Authors

ASD Staff

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