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Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Columnists

Palmer Luckey is an inventor who co-founded Anduril, one of the fastest-growing military contractors. He’s a darling of the podcast and panel circuit. He’s well spoken and insightful, and he often says provocative things. He did so on a recent panel, when he 

 using oxytocin as part of marriage counseling to raise America’s birth rate.

Luckey had been asked what he would do if he were starting a company today. “I would try to end the tragedy of divorce with oxytocin doping for marriage counseling,” he said. “We understand mammal pair-bonding pretty well. There’s a lot of people who want to stay together. Most of the people who don’t want to stay together should stay together, especially for their kids.”

 this idea stems from his obsession with natalism and the birth rate in America. For him, natalism is in part a civic duty. The nation survives only if Americans have many children.

Of course, oxytocin is real medicine. Doctors use it to induce labor. The body releases it when a mother nurses her baby. There may be some place for it in marriage counseling. Some people do have health conditions which leave them short of critical hormones.

The problem lies in reducing humans to biology. That is a frequent temptation among technologists like Luckey. These are the types that speak of human behavior only in terms of incentives and chemical reactions. But not all human problems can be reduced to chemistry. Nor are they all subject to better social engineering.

Luckey is not a random crank. He’s intelligent, and he’s behind two major innovations. First, he designed an early virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift. Second, he helped build a business model that has challenged the grip of the prime contractors at the Department of Defense. It promises to save money for American taxpayers.

His company, Anduril, is at the cutting edge of autonomous weapons systems. This tech is used not only for national defense abroad, but also at home. Luckey has helped design drones that detect and fight wildfires on their own. And Palmer Luckey is only 34 years old.

He’s a self-taught polymath, able to speak well on a range of subjects. He’s affable and funny. But his style is a curious mix of seriousness and flippancy about problems like the birth rate. He can speak plainly about waste in government procurement one moment and comment on meme culture the next.

In his ironic detachment, Luckey is decidedly a millennial. His signature outfit is the aloha shirt. In recent years he’s taken to rocking a mullet and goatee. Anduril makes drones that 

 gear that appeals to the fashion tastes of Gen Z.

Yet for all his charm, intelligence, and success, Luckey is not yet wise about procreation. He has missed the root of America’s birth-rate crisis. We have lost sight of what the human person is and what human life is for.

The birth-rate crisis is especially acute in Hawai‘i. We have doubled our population in the past half century, yet we have fewer school-aged children now than we did 50 years ago.

Luckey is not the only tech natalist. Elon Musk has had at least 14 children with four women. They include the pop musician Grimes and Shivon Zilis, an executive at his brain-implant company, Neuralink. He recently parted with Zilis, with whom he has four children.

 last year that Musk has offered large payments to the mothers of his children in exchange for signed NDAs. Ashley St. Clair, who has a child with Musk, said she was offered $15 million plus $100,000 a month to keep quiet about the baby. She refused the offer. According to the Journal, Musk also asked the influencer Tiffany Fong to have his child.

Natalism is a frequent talking point for Musk. He shows much less regard for traditional institutions like marriage, or for fathers being present in their children’s lives. At a certain point, that requires the commitment of time. It’s hard enough as a working father of four, and I don’t have the burden of running Tesla and SpaceX. Luckey at least wants marriages. Musk seems to have little use for the nuclear family.

Both men represent eccentricity backed by capital. There have always been men with odd ideas on how to reform the world. But rarely have they had the capital and reach that they do today. The industrial titans of a century ago had to build the tools for turning wealth into influence. Today’s billionaires make their fortunes early in life. They find Super PACs, family offices, and foundations already waiting.

The wealthy have long shaped public opinion, but usually through other institutions. In the early days, it was newspapers. Then it was think tanks. Now it’s whole networks of groups, run through family offices. Their job is to translate the will of the billionaire into lasting wealth and influence on the ground.

Think of Bill Gates, MacKenzie Scott, or Pierre Omidyar. They have built or bankrolled such networks to promote their philanthropic and political agendas. Philanthropy and politics are merely two names for the same goal of shaping society. The main thing that separates them is the tax code.

Modern billionaires also have a unique ability to shape public discourse, because they can use social media platforms to appeal directly to their followers. This influence is reinforced by celebrity culture, which lavishes attention on whichever figure captures the public imagination.

Musk is the subject of a new, nearly four-hour 

. He controls X, the social media site once known as Twitter. Luckey is less famous, with a cult following that skews nerdier than Musk’s mainstream audience.

But influence need not be widespread. If Luckey sways other tech billionaires, that’s enough.

How billionaires define problems and deploy capital to solve them matters, because they can build institutions that last. Think of the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, or the Carnegie Corporation. Fast forward a century, and the Musks and Luckeys may still have their thumb on the scale of the national debate.

So it matters that they get to the root. The birth rate is not the problem; it is a symptom of the problem. At the root is a misunderstanding of man’s nature and man’s purpose.

Luckey professes faith in Christ, and he has spoken of man as 

. Man is also marred by sin, and redeemable by Christ. Musk calls himself a cultural Christian, which is to want the fruit without the tree.

Man was commanded from the beginning to be fruitful and multiply. Redeemed man is called to labor on Christ’s behalf to make earth like heaven.

Without belief in God, it’s hard to convince people that children are a blessing and not a burden. Children are not to be sought as a means to national competitiveness. Rather, they are to be prayed for.

Oxytocin may indeed help repair some marriages, but it cannot keep a vow. To treat a husband or wife as a chemical robot with no will — merely controlled by hormones — is to degrade them.

Wanting more children, as a parent, is a good thing. Wanting a nation to be fruitful is also a good thing. But it’s possible to want the right thing for the wrong reason. If we want a fruitful America only to prevail in a contest with China, our labors on behalf of that goal cannot please God. If we want a fruitful America only so we can stop mass immigration, our labors on behalf of that goal cannot please God.

If Luckey wants to lead America to a more fruitful future, he can begin with what he already confesses. Man is made in God’s image. Such creatures can’t be dosed into faithfulness. They have to be called to it, and their children are answers to prayer before they are anything else.

Baby in crib i Stock 648255842 16x9

<title>Palmer Luckey’s oxytocin doping plan won’t fix the birth rate</title>

Asked what company he would start today, Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey said he would end divorce with “oxytocin doping.” ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on why the birth rate is a symptom, and why children are to be prayed for, not engineered.

Palmer Luckey’s oxytocin doping plan won’t fix the birth rate

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

Looking back on how their sourdough business — 

 — began, Tyler and Kelly Kimura say everything started when they purchased a manual dough sheeter so they could learn to make croissants.

“We had some baking experience and simply wanted to challenge ourselves,” Tyler says. “At the time, we never imagined we’d eventually open a bakery out of our own home.”

The couple had run a bakery from 2012 to 2017 — before they had kids, according to Kelly, who says she and Tyler liked sourdough because of its simple ingredients.

After a lot of trial and error, the couple reached a point where they were making croissants they were proud of. They would often give their baked goods out to people in the neighborhood, in order to get feedback on their recipes.

Around the same time, they noticed the growing popularity of cottage bakeries on the Mainland.

“That’s when we had our ‘aha’ moment,” Kelly says. “We realized this could become more than just a hobby.

“Ever since our first child was born, we’d been looking for a business we could build together — one that we both enjoyed and that would also give us the flexibility to spend more time at home, and eventually, homeschool our children,” she adds. “It took us a while before we felt confident enough to take the leap.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The business’s name was chosen by the couple’s three daughters."}]

“We gave them a few ideas, but they were set on ‘742’ because those were their ages at the time — 7, 4 and 2,” Kelly says. “The idea actually came from our oldest, and the younger two agreed. After making sure there wasn’t already another Seven4Two Bakery, we decided to roll with it.”

 officially launched last April with its first pick-up day for orders. The business’s opening menu featured croissants, sourdough bread and sourdough dark chocolate chunk cookies.

“Since then, we’ve expanded to include scones, cinnamon rolls and sourdough English muffins,” Tyler says.

The business’s sourdough English muffins ($10 for a bag of four) are the business’s most popular item, according to Tyler.

“They’re thick, fluffy and make a great breakfast sandwich, but they’re just as good toasted with butter and jam,” he says. “If you’re ambitious, try making eggs Benedict with them.”

The business’s assorted croissant boxes (around $18 for four assorted pieces) are also customer favorites. Seven4Two Bakery offers butter, chocolate, ham and cheese, origami and apple origami croissants. The origami ones are inspired by the Kouign Amann (a pastry known for its caramelized sugar crust), according to Kelly. The origami croissant is sprinkled with sugar, folded and baked in a muffin pan to create a flower-like shape.

“They’re buttery, flaky and made from dough that’s folded and layered over multiple days,” she explains.

The apple origami features a sweet apple, brown sugar and cinnamon filling. Kelly notes that the apple origami and chocolate croissants — made with three batons of rich, dark chocolate — are the most popular flavors. She recommends the ham and cheese croissant, which is made with Gruyere, for those who want a savory option.

Customers can also opt for the business’s original sourdough ($10) and cheddar and roasted garlic sourdough ($13). The loaves are known for their soft interior and crust, according to Tyler.

“They have a nice crust, but not the kind that’s going to hurt your jaw,” he says. “By the time they make it to your home, the crust has usually softened just a bit.”

The business’s cinnamon rolls ($18 for four) are swirled with cinnamon and brown sugar, then topped with cream cheese frosting.

“The cinnamon rolls are kind of my passion project,” Kelly says. “We weren’t going to sell it — I just used to make it for people — but people were like, ‘You need to sell them.’”’

Customers can also opt for sourdough dark chocolate chunk cookies (six cookies for $12) — which feature the nutty flavor of browned butter — and sourdough mac nut chocolate chunk cookies (six for $12). Buttermilk scones (six for $18), which are hand-crafted in small batches, come in flavors like blueberry, pumpkin chocolate chip, bacon cheddar, matcha white chocolate and lilikoʻi.

The business is usually open for online pre-orders and pick-ups on Saturdays. Follow the Instagram account for updates; Seven4Two Bakery’s menu and pre-orders are available via 

. Orders usually open on Sunday mornings and close on Wednesday nights, giving the couple enough time to prepare.

“What makes us unique is the story of how we got here,” Kelly says. “We didn’t start out with the goal of opening a bakery. It started as a challenge to see if we could make croissants at home, and now it has grown into a little bakery serving our Pauoa Valley community every Saturday morning.”

Seven4 Two owners 100626

<title>Seven4Two Bakery offers a variety of sourdough pastries</title>

The husband-and-wife owned bakery, located in Pauoa Valley, is usually open for pre-orders online and pick-ups on Saturdays. Customers can choose from sourdough English muffins, breads, croissants, scones and cookies.

Seven4Two Bakery offers a variety of sourdough pastries

WEB square crop Hayley Lehman Headshot RGZ1636

Haley Lehman

Aloha Spirit

Mike Shiroma’s neighborhood in the Pālolo Valley sounds different than it did when he was a kid, all because of the invasive coqui frog.

The quarter-sized tree frog native to Puerto Rico calls from dusk to dawn. They are one of the loudest frogs in the world, with calls reaching up to 100 decibels, similar to a lawnmower or motorcycle. They hitchhiked to Hawaiʻi Island in 1988 and have since set up colonies on Oʻahu in Pālolo Valley, Waimānalo and the Kuliʻouʻou summit.

Shiroma said he’s witnessed the number of frogs grow from a handful to dozens to thousands, and now estimates that there are 15,000-20,000 coqui frogs in Pālolo Valley.

Shiroma described the coqui frog noise as a “permanent, audio graffiti.”

“They're changing the environment forever,” he said.

Sidney Lynch called the noise deafening. She noticed the occassional frog washing down the Waiʻōmaʻo Stream and would call the Department of Agriculture to catch it. She offered to help after she noticed more and more frogs washing down the stream in 2025.

She co-founded Pālolo Coqui, a group of volunteers that meets multiple times a week to catch and kill coqui in the Pālolo Valley. Volunteers have caught 6,085 since they started in March.

“Even though it’s only concentrated in a five street area, it’s getting much noisier and they can spread,” Lynch said. “At this point, if there’s the chance to eradicate them, we may as well try.”

When volunteers came to Shiroma’s door with a flyer earlier this year, they joined forces to fight the invasion, going from what Shiroma called an “army of one” to a team. Shiroma has been hunting coqui frogs for years, and said he’s getting burned out and discouraged.

Volunteers wear long-sleeve neon shirts, long pants, headlamps and sturdy shoes, and carry plastic tubes, UV flashlights, citric acid solution and radios, and head out into the protected state land bordering the neighborhood to search for frogs.

Here’s how it works: Volunteers listen for the distinct “ko-KEE” call, approach the frog and place a long plastic tube on the frog. The frog jumps up and into the tube, and volunteers put the frog into a small bottle full of a citric acid solution where it is killed.

The male frogs like to hang out on logs and smooth leaves, such as monstera, pothos and heliconia. The “ko” of the coqui’s call asserts their territory and the “kee” calls for females.

Shiroma read scientific papers that said certain amphibians floresce under UV light. He tried it out, and found that certain UV light makes the coqui appear black and their eyes glow, allowing volunteers to look for frogs with UV flashlights when they are not calling.

“To me, this is the game changer. There’s no better discovery than this,” Shiroma said.

The coqui frog is one of 15 high priority pests that the 

 is monitoring. OISC is a project under the University of Hawaiʻi Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit that coordinates between communities, the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity and the Department of Land and Natural Resources. OISC first got involved with coqui frogs in Pālolo Valley in September 2024.

Robbie Snyder, a community engagement liaison with OISC, detailed the negative impacts coqui frogs can have on Hawaiʻi.

Coqui frogs have no natural predators on Hawaiʻi, so they get more dense than they would in their home country. Snyder said that one acre of land on Oʻahu can be home to 36,000 coqui.

The noise changes the soundscape of Oʻahu’s forests, Snyder said. Lynch said that the noise impacts resident’s quality of life.

Homeowners are required to disclose if there’s a coqui frog infestation on or near their property, which can drive down home prices.

Coqui frogs eat invertebrates, which damages Oʻahu’s native plants and can harm native plants when those plants aren’t being pollinated.

“Those insects also play vital pollinating services to our native plants, so when the frogs eat the native insects, we then lose things that can pollinate our native plants, and that has a cascading affect through the ecosystem,” Snyder said.

If snakes were introduced in Hawaiʻi, coqui frogs would provide a “massive food source” and aid their spread.

According to Snyder, the current goal is to contain coqui frogs until the state has the resources or better tools to eradicate them.

“With the resources we have right now, site level eradication of coqui is not possible,” Snyder said. “There isn’t enough funding, there’s not enough people, there’s not enough resources, and that’s even with the incredible community volunteers that we have, but we need more and we need a years-long commitment to funding.”

Snyder said that hand capture alone isn’t enough at this point to eradicate an infestation.

“There are small enough local populations that they haven’t become widespread. Hope is not lost with coqui frogs,” Snyder said.

OISC and state agencies spray a liquid combination of citric acid and water in an attempt to contain coqui frogs. Citric acid, which is found in citrus, some soft drinks and some candies, poses little risk to people and the environment, but is lethal to amphibians because they respirate through their skin.

OISC has been spraying 400 gallons of citric acid month in the Pālolo Valley for about two years and increased to spray twice monthly starting in August.

When coqui frogs infested Wahiawā in 2003, the Hawaiʻi Department of Agriculture and Biodiversity, the Oʻahu Army Natural Resources Program, the Department of Land and Natural Resources and OISC teamed up and eradicated the coqui infestation with a mix of citric spray and hand captures by 2007.

The volunteers in Pālolo have mixed opinions about the use of citric acid spray. Lynch believes citric acid spray is an effective tool and Shiroma believes it’s not as effective as hand capturing the frogs.

Shiroma called it an “agency failure” that the Department of Agriculture hasn’t dedicated more resources to preventing the spread of coqui.

“You guys are using the same broken playbook that’s not working and hasn’t worked for decades. This is not a new problem.” Shiroma. He advocated for the Department of Agriculture to make a dedicated team that works at night.

While the coqui frogs keep calling, Pālolo Valley neighbors will continue donning neon shirts and heading into the forest to stop them.

Coqui in Pālolo

<title>Volunteers battle coqui frog infestation in Pālolo Valley</title>

The Pālolo Coqui volunteer group is working alongside the Oʻahu Invasive Species Committee and state agencies to contain a coqui frog infestation in their neighborhood.

Volunteers battle coqui frog infestation in Pālolo Valley

A new Vietnamese cafe recently opened in Kakaʻako.

 — behind Down to Earth Kakaʻako — in the former space of Hibachi Honolulu, 

 offers a variety of Vietnamese dishes designed for easy grab-and-go.

“We have different types of rolls, and ‘roll’ is ‘on the go,’” says business owner Tam Tran, of the new cafe’s name.

The menu features Vietnamese coffees, spring and summer rolls, banh mi sandwiches and various plates. Most of the drinks feature a Vietnamese coffee base, according to Tran, who says customers can choose from different flavors of foam. Options include ube foam, salted foam and pandan latte ($7.50 each).

Non-caffeinated options, like choco cloud milk and Oreo pink cloud milk ($6.25 each) are designed for kids.

As part of its opening special, the cafe is currently offering 50% off any drink with the purchase of any food item.

Customers can choose from a variety of summer rolls (featuring a rice paper wrap) and deep-fried spring rolls. Spring rolls are usually filled with vermicelli, carrots, taro, onions and a protein of your choice, while summer rolls are stuffed with vermicelli, lettuce, basil, chives and a protein of choice.

A unique option is the cafe’s hidden crunch rolls (12 pieces for $17), which are spring rolls wrapped in summer rolls. They come with a sweet n’ chili sauce for dipping.

“You get everything in one bite; a lot of people tried it (during our first day of soft opening) and liked it,” Tran says.

Of the various sandwiches the cafe offers, Tran recommends the special banh mi ($13.25). It’s stuffed with pork, mayo, veggies and housemade pate.

“Our homemade pate is made from scratch,” she says.

The cafe is currently open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays to Mondays (closed Tuesdays). Customer parking is available at Shops at Keauhou Lane.

Open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays to Mondays

Rollin Rolls Cafe owner 021926

<title>New Vietnamese cafe opens in Kakaʻako</title>

Rollin’ Rolls Cafe opened recently in the former space of Hibachi Honolulu, next to Mad Pie in Kakaʻako. The biz offers a variety of spring and summer rolls, banh mi sandwiches and Vietnamese coffees.

New Vietnamese cafe opens in Kakaʻako

Kam Napier Headshot

A. Kam Napier

Government & Politics

I’ve been to any number of Neighborhood Board meetings over the years at which people vent their frustrations over the often worrisome, sometimes disgusting, sometimes terrifying behaviors of homeless people only to be met with silence by government officials. People say they don’t feel safe. Awkward silence. People ask when they’ll get their parks and sidewalks back. Silence. People ask, why isn’t anything happening. At most they get variations of, “It’s really hard. It’s really complicated. You see, the problem is really complex.”

But I’ve never seen that disconnect revealed so sharply as at the recent McCully-Mō

ili Neighborhood Board meeting in late October. You can watch the entire meeting for yourself 

, let me just show you some of the highlights here, to call out the reality of the situation, as well as the gulf between what people say and the official non-answers they get. 

The first notable moment, interestingly, came during a presentation of Ala Wai area park improvements, given by Tara Hirohata, East Honolulu district manager for the City & County of Honolulu Department of Parks & Recreation. Describing improvements to the comfort stations, she mentioned a need for new flooring and looked to a team member to confirm if the city would contract that work out or would do itself. That man — I didn't hear a name for him — comes to the microphone and says:

“We have to try to see if we can do it in-house. The problem is, I guess, the people who use it, sometimes they have to be mindful of when we do renovations ’cause they make all of our hard work look like rubbish. So, you know, in this case, we just renovated this probably like last year and it’s already trashed.”

A theme of the meeting is already emerging. He doesn’t have to specify who trashed the new renovations, everyone knows.

Questions and comments are taken after the city wraps up the presentation. A woman comes up from the audience, says she’s Angie, with an adult 7-a-side soccer league that uses the park. She is, overall, grateful for the planned improvements but has one concern she hasn’t heard addressed yet.

“My other concern with this park is the lighting. We play at 6:30, 7:30, and I find it really dark and a little bit dangerous for a single person just walking to and from my car. I’m always on my phone with my husband and he’s like, ‘Call me when you get out of your car and call me when you go back.’ … I think it should be a little bit more well-lit and safer for us walking to and from [the parking lot.]”

The shared frustrations and anxieties are escalating. First, the facilities are getting wrecked and nothing can be done, it just keeps happening. Now, a woman has stood up to say she feels unsafe in Honolulu and hasn’t heard that concern addressed.

Then we get to the centerpiece presentation of the meeting, a roughly 12-minute presentation by Roy Miyahira, the city’s Director of Homeless Solutions, appointed by Mayor Rick Blangiardi in February and commonly referred to as “the homeless czar.”

He spoke about the Homeless Outreach and Navigation for Unsheltered Persons (HONU) program at Old Stadium Park, a park long plagued by illegal camping and large numbers of homeless. The HONU program had previously been in Kapolei where “we had a lot of success in getting folks who are on the street … and placing at least almost half of these people into next-step type of housing.”

[{"type":"text","text":"But the going is tougher in McCully-Mo‘ili‘ili."}]

“I think the population is more transient, because they’re coming from the Waikīkī area. ... We’re finding folks who are from Mo‘ili‘ili and maybe Kaimukī and maybe as far away as Wai‘anae in some cases but we’re finding a lot of folks who are just from the Mainland. We’re not successfully finding them a place to go because most of these folks just want to stay in place. … There are some folks of course who just don’t want rules, who love their lifestyle out on the street and that is fine for this brief moment and so we’re losing about — maybe 40% of those go back to the streets. But so far at the Old Stadium has been successful. … One of the activities there is that we’re trying to get folks in Waikīkī bussed over to do a bit of a tour to see what sheltering does look like. Then we’re taking them to our Iwilei areas where we have IHS, our service provider. We’re having them take a look at what we have to offer.”

Let’s stop and unpack that for a moment. When the homeless czar says my neighborhood’s homeless are coming from Waikīkī, he’s describing the pattern we’ve all seen of the city’s homeless policies simply chasing people from neighborhood to neighborhood. Barely half of the people they’ve touched get off the streets. HONU drives people around to look at the shelters like realtors showing homes for sale and gets few takers.

He described this, nevertheless, as success. The city, he says, is “attacking” the problem with “comprehensive solutions.”

He spoke in an odd mix of buzzwords: “Market segmentation,” from the business world. “Bed utilization,” from the jargon of healthcare. He had a PowerPoint presentation, and discussed numbers in blue boxes and green boxes, described ever-more precise varieties of “beds.” Emergency beds. Detox beds. Transitional housing beds. Mental respite beds. Affordable housing beds.

Pressed by the board to state what all these bed utilization rates really mean, and what the city’s definition of success is, he doesn’t really have an answer.

“Our continuum of care organization, HMIS tracks [bed use],” he says. “As for your question, what defines success — there aren’t too many standards out there that measure success. ... I think measuring homelessness is almost as complex as the people who are homeless. Everyone’s trying to find the right way of measuring it but from my standpoint if someone tells me only 20% move on to next-level or we get 50%, I’d say it’s successful. Maybe not wildly, but it is successful.”

So now let’s unpack that: the city doesn’t have a goal. Not one the homeless czar can confidently and succinctly assert. Instead, he wings it, and off-the-cuff describes success as something like anywhere from half to most of the problem not going away.

Then we get to the most important thing said during the entire meeting. After the city’s homelessness presentation, a petite and soft-spoken woman comes up to the mic.

She says she is Jenny Suzuki and she has been working in Mo‘ili‘ili since 2008. She asks if something can be done about these sweeps that just move the homeless from neighborhood to neighborhood where they end up in the parking lot where she works. Why this concern?

“So this gentleman scratched up my car,”

 she says, holding up a photo of car damaged far beyond merely scratched. 

“I went out to go to my car and he was scratching it and when I was out there, he asked me if I had money, I said no. So I left my car, I just walked away, and then he asked me if this was my car and he proceeded to tell me that he was going to put me in my car and rape me.”

She says she filed a police report. She says she knows these problems aren’t easy to fix. “It sounds like you’re working really hard but sometimes, you know, they’re still left in the community for us to wonder how we can help and how we can protect ourselves and our property.”

Hold this in your mind. A woman just stood up say she was threatened with rape by a homeless man.

[{"type":"text","text":"Here is what the homeless czar had to say about that:"}]

“I think everyone knows that if there’s a situation where there’s a threat that you will all call 911 and an officer should be right there. In fact, where we are at Honu there are two officers there 24 hours a day. Two different shifts, so if you can’t yell out to them across the street, they’ll find officers to come there, a community police team to be there. What we are also have is CORE which people might not know, it’s a Crisis Outreach and Engagement type of team, they’re part of our emergency services team — the folks in the ambulances — but these folks are more equipped to take care of the homeless individuals where there might be a medical aid situation, but now most importantly outreach. So they can be called between 7 and 3 o’clock, Monday through Friday and the phone number is 768-CORE.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Woman: A homeless man wrecked my car and threatened to rape me."}]

City: Call 911. Now let me tell you more about our compassionate outreach to … the homeless.

Oblivious. Absolutely oblivious. No acknowledgement of her fear. No empathy. No sense whatsoever that he feels any duty to her as he rushes to elaborate on the sensitive Crisis Outreach Teams standing by to help, not threatened women, but the homeless.

I wish I could say the meeting erupted in outrage at that point, but no, it carried on in the usual formal, borderline boring mode of such meeting, as if nothing particularly important had been revealed. As if an enormous distress signal had not just been sent out in the room. Are we numb? Do we no longer care? Have we given up on expecting any better?

In a very real sense, Jenny Suzuki has no rights, none that are being defended, not by anyone in the room. And I don’t see the ACLU rushing to take her side.

There is a precept in systems thinking, one I’ve mentioned before, that the function of a system is what it 

. Not what it’s called. Not what its managers say it does. What it actually does, its real-world activities and outcomes.

— up from last year’s $14 million — and spend it tolerating, enabling, and subsidizing the very behaviors we told them we want stopped.

Since the homeless czar himself had to improvise a definition of success on the spot, allow me to restate, in writing, some pretty obvious metrics of success the people have been begging for, for years:

[{"type":"text","text":"Zero instances of human feces on the sidewalks."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Zero trashed public restrooms."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Zero fear of walking in the park at dinnertime."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And zero, absolutely zero, threats of rape from deranged homeless men."}]

The gap between that, and what the city says and does, should be a wake-up call for you.

[{"type":"text","text":"City leaders get to feel compassionate."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"We get to feel fear."}]

A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team. He can be reached at 

Honolulu Hale 020525

<title>Pipikaula Corner: How the City keeps Honolulu afraid</title>

On the issue of homelessness, it's as if the people and their government live on different planets. As an exchange at a recent Neighborhood Board meeting shows, everyday people are expressing real fear that goes unacknowledged by officials spouting jargon.

Pipikaula Corner: How the City keeps Honolulu afraid

Stephanie Salmons Headshot

Stephanie Salmons

One of Kalihi’s largest public housing communities will be transformed as the 

first of a multi-phase redevelopment effort

As part of the redevelopment, 13 existing buildings at Kūhiō Park Terrace Low-Rises and Homes will be demolished and 60 of the current 174 aging public housing units will be replaced with 302 new affordable rental homes and two manager units. The new units will be constructed in three mid-rise buildings that will range from six to eight stories.

Construction was expected to begin this month and be finished by mid-2028.

Financing for this first phase, a $214.3 million redevelopment, was recently secured.

The City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Housing Land Management, or DHLM and the Hawai‘i Public Housing Authority, or HPHA, made that announcement late last week.

“The Kūhiō Park Terrace redevelopment represents an essential reinvestment in one of Honolulu’s largest and oldest public housing communities,” Kevin Auger, DHLM director-designate told Aloha State Daily via email. “The original complex was built more than 60 years ago, and like many older properties across the island, it no longer meets the needs of today’s families.”

Auger says the project will replace aging infrastructure with “modern, resilient housing designed to support long-term affordability and quality of life for residents.”

“It reflects a broader effort to ensure that public lands and public resources are being used to provide safe, dignified homes for local families who are most at risk of being priced out.

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