Hawaii Plans Cabin Villages for Homeless : Shelters: The state’s staggering housing costs have forced many into the streets. Some residents object to the plan.

Hawaii is an island paradise to lei-bedecked tourists and well-heeled denizens--but not to its 8,000 to 10,000 homeless.

Shelters are few. And Gov. John Waihee’s plan to build nine temporary villages for the homeless, each with about 55 wooden, two-room cabins and a social services center, has drawn heated opposition from some residents.

The state’s staggering home prices and rental costs have forced families to double and triple up in homes and apartments and has sent others to live on the beaches, in the parks or in cars parked on the streets, Winona E. Rubin, state director of human resources, told the Honolulu City Council.

“Thousands of others are always just a paycheck or two from being evicted,” she said.

The median price of a home runs about $345,000, and two-bedroom apartments rent for $1,000 to $1,500 a month, while personal incomes are about the same as in most mainland states. Monthly mortgages exceeding $2,000 are common.

The vast majority of Hawaii’s homeless are not mentally ill, drunks or drug abusers, but people and families who for some reason “or just bad luck” cannot afford a place to stay, Rubin said.

For the children--a third of the homeless--”every day they are homeless, they grow farther and farther away from a stable life,” she said.

Last year, 40-year-old Merlott Edwards was living comfortably in a three-bedroom duplex in a middle-class suburban neighborhood. But her marriage broke up--she says she was abused by her husband--and she and her 17-year-old son were left without a home. She had no job.

Her situation is typical of many of the 250 families now being housed in temporary shelters provided by private charities on Oahu, officials say.

“I had nowhere to go. My mother already has two brothers living with her in a one-bedroom apartment, and the landlord didn’t want any more people staying there,” said Edwards, who was born and raised in Hawaii.

Edwards is undergoing computer training and hopes to get a job that will pay for food and rent. She can remain in the current shelter only for six months.

Although she has been accepted for a state rental subsidy, all the available units she visited have waiting lists and rents that start at $700 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in Waianae, 35 miles from Honolulu.

To Edwards, the homeless villages would be a godsend.

“I would love to go. It helps out a lot to have a roof over your head so you don’t have to live in the park,” she said.

Under the plan, the villages would be built on two-acre parcels in seven neighborhoods and would accommodate 500 families. Some would be finished by Christmas; all would be completed by spring.

Plans call for each village to have five clusters of 11 cabins surrounding a central playground and lawn area. Each cabin will be about 200 square feet, including a bathroom, and will rent for about $350 a month, but low- and no-income families will be able to use a state stipend to pay their rent.

The villages will be operated by three private agencies with experience in caring for and placing the homeless.

“The units are not attractive spaces to live in. They are very cramped,” said Bob Stauffer, the state’s homeless coordinator. “What is attractive is that it’s a step up from living in your car.”

The villages have had broad support in the state Legislature, which appropriated $3.7 million this year for their construction. Another $3 million was donated by a private foundation.

At a community meeting in Hawaii Kai, a middle- to upper-class suburban community 15 miles east of the downtown area, many in the audience of 250 people hooted and jeered as officials explained the village would be there for only five years.

“If you’re using the word temporary, it’s some form of obfuscation as far as I’m concerned because you can’t tell me, at the end of five years, that there aren’t going to be any more homeless applying for that housing,” said David Matthews, who lives near the designated site.

Lani Garcia, one of the few who supported the village, called upon her neighbors to be more sensitive.

“I haven’t heard much aloha spirit here. We’re sitting in our $500,000-plus homes criticizing people who are less fortunate than us, who are trying to get on their feet,” she said. “Their circumstance could be our circumstance by fate.”

The Hawaii Kai and Waimanalo communities are being given a chance to come up with alternatives to the villages, such as having the state subsidize families in vacant rental units or having area churches adopt families. The Waimanalo community has drafted a plan that would set up the cabins in the back yards of volunteer residents.

The governor said legitimate community concerns about the villages’ construction and operation will be considered, but that he wouldn’t let opponents delay the project just for the sake of delay: “Every day that they postpone this, somebody sleeps outside.”

Mayor Frank Fasi also has been a strong supporter of the villages. He said they will provide shelter for at least some homeless families until government officials can coordinate the development of the large number of affordable rental housing units that are needed.