Migration
When Homeless Is Better Than Home
Micronesians Crowd Hawaii's Homeless Shelters
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| A homeless Marshallese family hangs out in Honolulu’s Kakaako Waterfront Park, waiting for the Next Step shelter to open in the evening. |
The increase in out-migration of Pacific Islanders—many unprepared by schools or life back home to succeed in the United States—is resulting in record levels of Marshallese and Micronesians crowding Hawaii’s homeless shelters. But many Marshallese and Micronesians believe it’s better to be homeless in Hawaii, than to live in their home islands.
“As many as one in five Micronesians living in Hawaii may have entered homeless shelters during the past six years—costing the state and its (social service) providers between $3-to-$6 million annually in shelter services,” wrote University of Hawaii doctoral student Michael Ullman in a preliminary report entitled the “Not-So-Silent Epidemic: The Rise in Shelter Utilization by Micronesians in Hawaii 2001 to 2006.” Ullman and Hawaii state officials call islanders from the three freely associated states—Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau—“Micronesians.”
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As a percentage of the homeless population the Micronesian numbers are relatively small. But the percentage increase in their numbers has been so dramatic within the span of five years that it’s ringing alarm bells for Hawaii officials.
Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle told Pacific Magazine that the state has been aware of the “variety of challenges faced by Marshallese and Micronesians—Honolulu is very urban, it’s a different type of lifestyle. It’s harder because it’s not what they expected.”
Historically, the steady but relatively small influx of Marshallese and Micronesians into Hawaii since the start of the first Compacts of Free Association with their visa-free access to the U.S. beginning in 1986 has put financial strains on the state’s schools and hospitals, for which they’ve received some federal government financial reimbursement. But now the state has been “caught by surprise with the numbers of Marshallese and Micronesians in the homeless shelters,” says Lingle.
Dr. Neal Palafox, formerly the director of preventive health services in the Marshall Islands and now a faculty member at the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, told Pacific Magazine that the Marshallese and Micronesians in homeless shelters don’t fit the usual profile of homeless. Those clients are often alcoholics and substance abusers or people with mental health problems.
Between 2001 and 2006, use of Hawaii homeless shelters by Marshallese and Micronesians “nearly tripled from 7.9 percent (286 of 3,634) in 2001 to 23.1 percent (736 of 3,188) in 2006,” Ullman reports.
The Next Step homeless shelter, in which Palafox is involved, has discovered that half of the occupants using the shelter are Marshallese and Micronesians, with the Chuukese homeless population ranking highest followed closely by Marshallese. Most are families with young children.
“Those days are over when you can come (to Hawaii) and expect to live with family,” he says. “There are building codes that the state enforces so you can’t have 30 people living in one apartment. Neighbors will complain if there are too many people or too much noise. The cost of living is higher, and you have to pay your bills.”
For an increasing number, the use of a shelter is a strategic move. “They know the shelters offer a protected area,” Palafox says. “A lot of them actually have jobs (but can’t afford the cost of living) so they go to work during the day and sleep in the shelter at night. And, they know that people in the shelters are given number one priority to access (state) low-income housing.”
A single Marshallese mother of three living at the Next Step shelter, who requested to remain anonymous, told Pacific Magazine that she and her children are better off homeless in Hawaii than if they return to the Marshall Islands.
“We are getting more help here than we would if we were back home,” she says. “We have medical insurance. They (state of Hawaii) help us get what we need. If we’re hungry we go to a food bank, religious groups come in and feed us. It’s difficult but we’re getting help, we’re eating. In the Marshall Islands I wouldn’t get this kind of help. It’s harder living back home.”
She said her goal is to get her children through school and to get a house. “Personally I want to go home but I’m putting my children’s needs first,” she says. “I want them to go to these schools.”
She uses the word “kijenmij” (persevere) to describe the sacrifice she’s willing to make for her children’s future success, believing her children are far better off in Hawaii public schools than public schools in the Marshall Islands.
It’s not just the homeless shelters that are experiencing a jump in the numbers of Marshallese and Micronesians as, back home, economies stagnate and school systems continue to produce poor-to-mediocre results. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin recently reported that over the past five years, the state’s Department of Education has seen a 92 percent increase in the number of students from the Marshall Islands and Micronesia. This increase has catapulted the Marshallese language to the fourth most spoken language at home, aside from English, by students in Hawaii’s public schools.
But the high number of Marshallese and Micronesians utilizing the state’s services, welfare programs and occupying the homeless shelters is creating a stigma.
“I feel we’re sensing a backlash by locals,” says Richard Salvador, a Palauan member of the Micronesian Community Network. “They (Hawaii residents) don’t understand why we’re here. They don’t know about (the provisions under) the Compact of Free Association. Meanwhile, we’re crowding out their low-income houses and using their welfare programs.”
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| "I feel we’re sensing a backlash by locals…They (Hawaii residents) don’t understand why we’re here. They don’t know about (the provisions under) the Compact of Free Association. Meanwhile, we’re crowding out their low-income houses and using their welfare programs." —Richard Salvador
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According to Salvador, there are an estimated 20,000 Marshallese and Micronesians living in Hawaii—“85 percent of them are on social welfare, 80 percent are on MedQuest (health insurance for low-income people) and almost 90 percent of them occupy the low-income housing projects.
“Homelessness, lack of adequate health care and limited English are the three problems our people are facing,” adds Salvador. “Because of their poor English, they’re not marketable to employers. Even the children have problems navigating through the school system—again because of the language problem.”
He believes that the various governments in the islands have contributed to the current difficulties Marshallese and Micronesians are facing in Hawaii. “When it comes to nation building, the Micronesian governments have failed miserably,” Salvador says. “That’s why there has been such a great out-migration from the islands.”
The Marshall Islands government’s Economic Policy, Planning and Statistics Office has correlated spikes in out-migration with specific events relating to economic downturns or during the renegotiation of the second Compact in the early 2000s, which raised fears about the U.S. curtailing the visa-free access to America. An average of just 412 Marshallese a year moved to America in the 1991-1996 period. But since then, the number has jumped to more than 1,000 annually.
Despite the stigma Marshallese and Micronesians have created for themselves, state and health officials are doing what they can to help them access Hawaii’s health, education, financial and housing programs. Hawaii officials say they aren’t expecting any assistance from either the government of the Marshall Islands or the Federated States of Micronesia.
Marshallese and Micronesians who migrated here “want something better. And for people who want to succeed, they just have to understand it’s a different lifestyle (in the U.S.),” says Lingle. “We look for who the community leaders are and seek their help. We don’t look at the government leaders (from the Marshall Islands or Micronesia) as influential.”
Public Health Nurse Barbara Tom at the Ala Moana Health Center agrees, saying that her programs haven’t been able to get any assistance from the island diplomatic missions in Honolulu.
“There’s not much support from the (Marshallese and Micronesian) consulates,” says Tom, who is a member of the New Nations of Micronesia Committee that was established by Hawaii health officials as well as other service providers to improve infrastructure to serve the growing Marshallese and Micronesian communities.
Both the governments of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia did not respond when asked
by Pacific Magazine for comments on
the situation many of their citizens are finding themselves in at Hawaii’s homeless shelters.
Although many islanders acknowledge that there is a social and cultural safety net back home, Salvador says many interviewed during a recent survey say they “prefer the safety net of the welfare system versus the social net in the islands. It (welfare system) doesn’t discriminate, and it’s based on your situation not who you are.”
But not everyone is in the system. Enter Tony Lat a young Marshallese who first arrived in Hawaii under a U.S. Job Corp training program. Lat was found on a cool evening in April foraging for food in a trashcan at the Kakaako Park
in Honolulu.
Lat represents a portion of the Marshallese and Micronesians population who’ve left their home islands only to become lost in the new world. When he first arrived in Hawaii, he stayed with relatives in the Makiki area of Honolulu but over the course of the past seven years they lost the apartment and he lost track of his relatives. He says he’s never stayed at the homeless shelter nor has he had medical treatment. Asked if he’d like to return home to the Marshall Islands, Lat simply shrugs and says “I don’t know.”
