What Can We Do About the Homeless?

The best Idea Mufi had when he forced the homeless out of Ala Moana Park, was to allow them to camp on the grounds of the police station -- and predictably, there were few takers, and those who did, were very well behaved because there was a constant police presence. That's what you need to make one of those campgrounds work -- a police/supervisory presence, and not just allow it to devolve into a free for all, where the worst prey on the worse,etc.

And of course, one needs adequate sanitation facilities and some provision for storing/preparing food so that the rats aren't running all over the place -- as is happening now, all over the city.

The presence of the homeless would be a good and constant reminder to the lawmakers of the very real problems of Hawaii/Honolulu -- that needs to be solved, instead of creating pork barrel projects for all the rich people they hope to become -- thinking everybody else is richer than them, and so why should they "work for free" in their government jobs?

Obviously, ignoring the problem and wishing the lawless are going to be law-abiding citizens is not going to work -- and one has to devise a strategy that will, for everybody, which means a win-win attitude that has to be cultivated and taught, as something very useful in schools, and not the so-called education that creates these problems. So it is quite predictable that everyone grows up wanting something for nothing -- and thus we have the present state of Hawaii/Honolulu.

And all your government workers say, "That's not my job, and do you expect me to work for free?!!!"

Solving the problems of a society/community, is the whole reason and purpose of government, and not their own job security and advancement. Yet that is largely what government has become -- an entitlement program for government workers -- far beyond providing the median for citizens in the society as a whole.

And that is the other major part of the present social/economic crisis, of increasing these entitlements for the self-serving government workers -- with nothing left over to serve the community at large. Instead, our government workers claim they are the poor and underprivileged -- and should get the money intended for the poor and underprivileged (keiki, kupuna, whatever).

All these things are related -- but one needs to be able to see the whole picture and not just the parts, and partisanships that fragment this vision and clarity.

Whenever there is a problem, there are two basic human impulses: One is to eliminate the problem, and the second, is to exploit it for one's own gain, which is to perpetuate the problem -- and that's why we constantly need more money for the schools, sewers, roads, but the money just disappears, and there is no accounting for them -- and department heads who insist they cannot be accountable. More money is not the solution, it is the problem -- that just keeps getting worse and more dire. Sadly, it usually requires a monumental catastrophe to change that status quo -- because seldom does a society change willingly -- and then they have to.