Council Candidates Discuss Homelessness
08/31/2010
RJ Brown/Civil Beat
Second in a series on City Council candidates and the issues.
There's a changing of the guard coming to Honolulu Hale.
Not only will voters elect a new mayor in September, they'll also welcome four new members to the the nine-member City Council, either in the primary or the November general election. The [[Honolulu City Council Elections 2010|City Council election] comes as Honolulu grapples with deep financial issues such as city furloughs, a $5.5 billion rail project and how to pay to fix the city's aging sewers. A worsening homelessness problem, trash and zoning issues also need to be addressed.
The three districts in contention are Districts 2, 4 and 6. Breene Harimoto is running uncontested in District 8.
To help voters wade through the 21-candidate pool, Civil Beat sent out a 10-point questionnaire to every candidate running for the council. Their answers help paint a picture of their priorities and their ideas for solving Honolulu's biggest problems.
The responses revealed four major areas of concern: Rail, homelessness, infrastructure and trash.
Today, we look at the issue of homelessness.
Five candidates did not respond after almost a month, despite repeated e-mails and phone calls. We will post the complete answers from the 16 who did by the end of the week.
