The city’s CORE team vows to continue to fight homelessness in the North Shore

Last week, the city’s team of emergency medical technicians and homeless outreach workers returned to Wahiawa and the North Shore, met a dozen homeless people and vowed to keep coming back to provide first aid, wound care, social services, shelter beds and eventually stables if not permanent residence.

10 emergency physicians and community health workers from CORE — or the City Department of Emergency Services’ Emergency Response and Engagement Program — arrived at the Haleiwa Small Boat Harbor in refurbished ambulances and a repurposed city bus, wearing matching red CORE T-shirts and brought along plenty of cold bottled water to break the ice with the homeless people they encountered.

John Kanaulu, CORE’s director of field operations, estimated that the North Shore alone, excluding Wahiawa, is home to 600 to 700 homeless people, many of whom grew up on the North Shore only to remain homeless for years, often decades.

CORE teams began their work in December 2021, initially working with homeless people in downtown, Chinatown, and Waikiki, then expanding less frequently to windward, central Oahu, and the west and north coasts.

About half of the people they met on Oahu reported being “chronically homeless,” meaning they had lived on the streets for a long time or repeatedly, often with common themes such as mental illness and substance abuse.

Over the summer, the teams began making more regular visits to the North Shore to build stronger relationships with the homeless people they encounter, with the goal of gaining their trust and getting them off the streets.

They hope to return every week.

The CORE teams found that the population on the west and north shores of Oahu was very different from the people they encountered in the cities of Honolulu.

In general, CORE workers say, homeless people in the city are much more willing to accept services and shelter, and to share their medical history and personal information, compared to people they meet on the North Shore, where there are no homeless shelters, less support, and the homeless are much more are more protective of their personal information.

Homeless people in Wahiawa, North Shore and Leeward Oahu are used to living alone in vehicles or in public spaces, often for years, CORE staff told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser during their trip to the North Shore and Wahiawa last week.

None of the homeless people the CORE team met accepted CORE’s invitation to board their bus to be transferred to a shelter in the city or to a so-called medical respite for those with serious medical needs.

On Oahu, the average life expectancy of a homeless person is only 53 years.

Like people living in other homeless communities across Oahu, none wanted to leave the place where they had lived for years, if not their entire lives, even if it meant getting off the street, where they could work with social workers on plans to rebuild their life.

Few people will reveal much of their personal information, including their last name and age, to the CORE team.

One woman named Lana, the owner of a friendly little white-and-white dog, took bottled water and medical attention to heal and bandage both hands after she was attacked by another dog.

She also welcomed CORE’s offer to help reinstate her expired driver’s license.

But Lana told the CORE staff that she would not move to the shelter because none of them would let her bring a dog, which was not true.

She also declined to give her last name to CORE or the Star-Advertiser.

No one at CORE argued with Lana about her misperception of the pets that are accepted at some of Oahu’s homeless shelters — even though they are more than an hour away from the North Shore.

But neither of the CORE EMTs or community health workers were discouraged when others they met, like Lana, turned down their offers of shelter, temporary medical care housing, or even the possibility of long-term housing.

Several CORE staff told the Star-Advertiser during their most recent visit to the North Coast that trust — and progress — will require patience and more frequent return visits to help meet needs beyond wound care and water, such as getting the homeless to access state financial aid. the help they receive. have the right to obtain state certificates necessary for work and housing.

“In the city, everyone needs everything,” said medical worker Carlo Menezes. “On the North coast, they do not ask for special help. It’s a matter of trust. They don’t know us. They don’t know how we are going to help them.”

The group of six tourists, returning from Dallas and Nashville, Tenn., saw the CORE team working with Lana and other homeless people on the grass behind Haleiwa Joe’s Restaurant at the Haleiwa Small Boat Harbor and applauded the city’s multifaceted homeless efforts .

They had just completed a non-certified North Coast shark dive on their last visit to Oahu, where they are staying in Waikiki, and were used to seeing homeless encampments all the way from Daniel K. Inoue International Airport to Waikiki and beyond. North shore.

“We have a lot in Texas,” said Randall Gerry, 25. “They all need help.”

That’s when Menezes and other CORE workers responded to a call that a woman who appeared to be at least 70 years old had fallen while living near the harbor at Haleiwa Ali’i Beach Park.

When they arrived, a high school senior with long gray hair who gave only her first name, Carol, was sitting in a new wheelchair at a picnic table on the grass.

Carol said she was evicted earlier in the week and fell after moving into Ali’i Beach Park and hurt her left leg. Then someone bought her a wheelchair, which she used, she said.

She allowed the paramedics to examine her leg and welcomed the offer from CORE women to take her to a park bathroom to relieve herself and help her shower, where they could also further assess other possible injuries.

Afterwards they gave Carol some fresh clothes. But she declined to provide any further information, including her age, and said she would not leave the North Shore and preferred to remain homeless in Ali Beach Park, where several other people appeared to be living in their cars.

The only downside, Carol told the CORE team, was that her spot at the picnic table was doused with park sprinklers every night.

Another contingent of CORE members later encountered several homeless people living in their cars at nearby Kayaka Bay Beach Park, including Willie Ramirez, 54, who grew up on the North Shore and now lives in an age- and sun-faded Toyota.

“Uncle Willie,” as CORE members have come to call him, told them he was diabetic, so the emergency room doctor pricked his finger and told Ramirez his blood sugar was low.

They gave Ramirez a liquid dose of dextrose, which quickly cheered him up.

After being evaluated and offered a bed at the shelter, Ramirez said, “Maybe if it’s somewhere around here.”

Asked how long he’s been homeless, Ramirez told the Star-Advertiser, “It’s been a long time.”

Community Services Specialist Elijah Galuan was encouraged that Ramirez didn’t immediately rule out the possibility of getting out of his Toyota and into a shelter.

Like his CORE teammate Menezes, Galuan said the key will be gaining the trust of homeless people living on the North Shore.

“We just need to build more understanding,” Galuan said. “That’s the good thing about CORE. We keep coming back.”

EMS Director James Ireland said Mayor Rick Blangiardi is continuing to search for a location on the North Shore to team up with the state and nonprofits to create another Kauhale Tiny House community where homeless people can live and receive social assistance with other homeless people from the North coast. .

In general, unlike some of the other homeless camps in other parts of Oahu, North Shore “often has people who have lived in Hawaii their whole lives and have deep connections with friends and family, but are alienated, perhaps because of mental health and addiction . Therefore, they depend on each other for emotional support. And they are extremely resistant to the transfer of any aid, mostly located in Ivilea. So we have to find a solution for homeless people on the North Shore.”

CORE staff continues to build a database of all the homeless people they meet on Oahu, including the North Shore, to learn more “about their issues and treatment needs,” Ireland said.

Getting them off the street and getting the help they need benefits everyone, he said.

“No. 1, people are suffering and there are public sanitation, public safety issues,” Ireland said. “At the end of the day, people have a right to be safe in their neighborhoods, in their parks and on their beaches.”