My Personal 'Faith Priorities' for this Election

The Monkeypod Tree

High hopes and dashed dreams in Kalihi public housing areas

In Kalihi, many public housing areas hard-hit by crime, deterioration

By mary vorsino
Advertiser Urban Honolulu Writer

When Mayor Wright Homes opened in 1952, its 364 units embodied the dream of public housing not only because of what it was — safe, modest homes for the poor — but because of what it had replaced — 15 acres of slums, home to 2,000.

Today, Mayor Wright in Kalihi embodies all the dreams dashed for public housing.

Many — including some public housing tenants — see it as an eyesore and a place with a reputation for crime. Its units are plagued with maintenance problems. Residents along Pua Lane, which butts up against the housing project, blame Mayor Wright for attracting drug deals to the street, for crime that spills into their properties and for the run-down look of the area.

Tenants who live within Mayor Wright say they fear for their safety every time they walk outside.

"I am so appreciative of having a home. But we are hostages of our residences," said Fetu Kolio, 41, who has lived at Mayor Wright since 2004.

But can one housing project — any one housing project — really be so bad for a neighborhood?

Though experts stress that the question is far from simple, they say the simple answer is — "yes."

"When places are allowed to get so run down that it becomes this socially demoralizing and depressing place, then that certainly can encourage further deterioration and vandalism and create an overall environment of disrepair, both socially and physically," said Karen Umemoto, the director of community mobilization at the University of Hawai'i Asian and Pacific Islander Youth Violence Prevention Center, which has worked with Mayor Wright residents to push for changes.

Across the state, residents, advocates and community leaders are trying to assess the extent to which distressed public housing projects are negatively affecting communities and what can be done to help, especially as backlogged repairs mount and there are no signs the situation will improve soon.

Some have warned that deteriorating projects attract crime. Others say they hurt business and home values. And still others point to the potential social effects of depressed projects on their tenants and neighbors, from less community involvement to fear over even going outside to patrol the grounds.

The debate has significant implications for communities islandwide, some of which have already taken up the issue of how to tackle what some contend are spillover effects from public housing.

For Kalihi residents, the issue is particularly central: The area is home to nine public housing projects, giving it the highest concentration of public housing in the state.

At the Kalihi-Palama Neighborhood Board monthly meeting, talk of crime around Mayor Wright Homes and other housing projects is almost always brought up.

"It's actually getting worse. A lot of people are afraid," said Cardy Fang, a member of the board who lives across from the project on Pua Lane.

possible effects

Nationally, the extent to which public housing projects affect neighborhoods is hotly debated, largely because some advocates say developments are unduly blamed for community blight when they are often part of a larger problem, not necessarily the problem. Pointing the finger at public housing projects can also spur tensions in neighborhoods and stigmatize public housing residents.

Distressed public housing projects can also drive out higher-income residents and spur concentrations of poverty, degrading the overall look of neighborhoods, sometimes to such an extent that community pride is an impossibility.

Hawai'i Public Housing Authority officials have acknowledged that safety is an ongoing concern at several distressed public housing projects, including Mayor Wright and Kuhio Park Terrace, both of which have round-the-clock private security.

HPHA executive director Chad Taniguchi has suggested installing security cameras at some projects or adding to the security force. Taniguchi said, though there is still a lot of study needed to determine just how much distressed public housing developments contribute to social problems in communities, there is certainly a link.

"Whatever goes on in public housing affects the surrounding community," Taniguchi said.

For community members, the difficulty in trying to figure out the effects of public housing on communities is twofold: For one, finding statistics to back up suspected trends is nearly impossible because HPHA keeps few numbers to track crime over time at public housing projects; and, secondly, not everyone agrees about just how significant the impacts of public housing on communities are.

Statistics for police beats that include housing projects don't paint an accurate picture, many contend, because an increase in crime cannot necessarily be pinned on a public housing project. Police were not able to provide year-by-year numbers for crime at housing projects, but they were able to create a snapshot for crime at some public housing projects from January 2007 to June 2008.

During that period, police responded to 172 robberies, 115 sex assaults, 405 car thefts, 207 aggravated or "simple" assaults, and 1,186 thefts at nine public housing projects in urban Honolulu, including Kalaniuhia in Chinatown, Mayor Wright Homes and Kuhio Park Terrace in Kalihi, and Punchbowl Homes on Captain Cook Avenue. The greatest number of calls to police were for arguments (1,812 calls), nuisance complaints (2,725), and suspicious circumstances (3,848).

In the absence of good statistics, many are relying on anecdotes to help spur HPHA officials and legislators to invest more time and money into thinking about how distressed public housing projects are, in their estimation, bringing down neighborhoods. Tenants in Mayor Wright Homes, Kuhio Park Terrace, Palolo Valley Homes and other projects have all said they believe crime is on the rise.

Some fear for their safety.

"I'm aware of how scary it is to be a tenant in public housing," said Petina Rios, a resident at Wahiawa Terrace since 2002 and treasurer for Island Tenants on the Rise, a tenant advocacy group.

She said the biggest problems appear to be with gangs of youths who think projects are free game as places to do whatever they want without anyone stopping them. And to some extent they're right, argued Kolio, the Mayor Wright resident.

Kolio has been trying for years to drive out bad elements in Mayor Wright.

For his efforts, he said, he has been threatened regularly.

"We shouldn't have to put ourselves in harm's way to get attention," said Kolio, as he sat on his small lanai, cluttered with all the documents he has collected over the years in his crusade to improve security at Mayor Wright.

Kolio said part of the problem is that hired security guards at Mayor Wright can't do much more than call police if something occurs. And, he added, it appears they are as scared of the wrongdoers as everyone else is. The guards staff the entrance gate to Mayor Wright and patrol the premises.

longtime crime issues

Crime is nothing new to Mayor Wright.

In the late 1990s, police officers were stationed at the project after Mayor Wright became the first Weed and Seed site in the Islands. The program, which attempts to target crime and "seed" community involvement, got wide praise from residents. The crime rate in the area dropped, tenants said they felt safe and Mayor Wright's reputation as a haven for drugs and delinquency dropped off somewhat.

But in 2003, Weed and Seed officers shifted focus to Kalihi Valley.

And in 2005, residents say, troublemakers began returning.

For the last several years, the state Legislature has gotten involved in the issue, after tenants have gone to lawmakers pleading for help. Now, HPHA at least has a budget for security. It got $1.5 million in fiscal year 2008, and $1.9 million fiscal year 2009 from the state Legislature. Lawmakers have also taken up several bills to address crime at housing projects, and in the last session passed a measure to ban the consumption of alcohol in common areas, such as yards and stairwells, in public housing.

State Rep. Karl Rhoads, vice-chairman of the Human Services and Housing Committee, called Mayor Wright a "disaster" and said "security is problem No. 1." Though he contended the situation on Pua Lane has improved since the mid-1990s, when it was "an open drug market," he said crime within Mayor Wright has worsened as the physical state of the housing project continues to degrade.

"It's the ghetto effect," said Rhoads, whose district includes Kalihi-Palama. "In Mayor Wright Homes itself, it's just the wild, wild West. It spills out into the neighborhood. It's unsafe to be around."

Rhoads added that to some extent public housing as a whole has gotten a "bad rap."

And he said not all projects are hotbeds of crime. But he said part of the problem is the state's inability to keep troublemakers out of housing projects, even if they don't live there. And he said that shouldn't be such a tall order, considering that Kukui Gardens — a private affordable housing complex right across the street from Mayor Wright — has been able to do just that and is considered safe.

Sgt. John Kauwenaole, of Weed and Seed, said he recently formed a "rapid response team" with residents at Mayor Wright to target issues and root out criminals. "We're also working with community patrols outside Mayor Wright," he said, "and we go back to Mayor Wright so many days a month just to do visibility stuff."

Kauwenaole said most of the problems at Mayor Wright are started by teens and twentysomethings who drink and do drugs, then cause trouble in the project or in the community.

Tenants say they go as far as attacking passersby.

And they also say some of the wrongdoers are not only doing drugs, but dealing them.

Kauwenaole said part of the problem is that Mayor Wright has always had a reputation as a bad place, so criminal elements gravitate there, hoping for a safe haven. But he added that some of the crime fears at Mayor Wright are overstated, and said the surrounding community also sees its fair share.

Ken Harding, a member of the Kalihi-Palama Neighborhood Board who lives near KPT, said maintenance at public housing projects is a big part of the problem. And, he added, the state of public housing in Kalihi wouldn't be tolerated in other communities.

"The unsightliness of some projects is a major concern," he said. "If they can have a task force for potholes, why not for public housing?"

He and others added that the question over the extent to which deteriorating public housing damages neighborhoods begs another one for Kalihi: How much of Kalihi's reputation as a crime-ridden community is wrapped up in the fact that it has so many housing projects?

Umemoto, who is also a UH professor of urban and regional planning, said public housing has a powerful stigma and its reputation — warranted or otherwise — often spreads beyond its boundaries.

She said a major part of the problem is that tenants feel powerless and threatened, so they tend to insulate themselves and ignore suspicious people or blatant wrongdoing. She said the state needs to do a better job reaching out to tenants so they feel safe coming forward and know who to talk to if they see something going on at a housing development.

"Tenants would need some scope of power and some resources to make changes, and that's what seems to be missing in public housing," Umemoto said.

She added that some crime could be driven away with simple environmental changes.

For example, she said, if a playground were built at Mayor Wright, more parents and kids would come out during the day, giving wrongdoers less space and changing the feel of the housing complex from one where kids have no place to play to one where kids congregate in one place to play.

feeling the need

Like Mayor Wright, Palolo Valley Homes is a project in distress — and one where residents say they're seeing more crime. The squatty, brown buildings in the housing development sit in the back of the valley, near homes, a school and a park.

Rachel Orange, chairwoman of the Palolo Neighborhood Board, said neighbors of the housing project often say the look of the development attracts crime.

"There's definitely a desire to see the project fixed up," Orange said.

On a recent afternoon, Gloria Davis sits in her tidy living room, full of family photos, at Palolo Valley Homes and remembers what the project was like three decades ago, when she first moved in. The 58-year-old, who raised three children at Palolo Valley Homes, said the community was quiet and the neighbors nice. Today, she said, crime is returning after a brief reprieve, and it's scaring her.

"Nothing has been done" to stop the bad elements from coming in, she said.

Ruth Silberstein, principal of Palolo Elementary School, also thinks crime in the project is increasing. Most of her students come from the project, so she hears about troubles at the development from them. She also hears it from parents, who come to her with their fears.

"It's starting to pick up again," said Silberstein, adding that the school teaches kids that any bad behavior they see in the projects is not acceptable in classrooms. Silberstein said on one Saturday night this summer, she dropped off some kids at the housing project after a chess tournament and she felt their trepidation at returning.

"There's fights going on in the dark," she said. "I feel for them."

In addition to the fears about crime, Silberstein said she believes the distressed state of public housing and its concentration of poverty also produce other social ills, from truancy to health problems to domestic violence. And she said many times she is as much an educator as a social worker for parents, who come to her to talk about disagreements with neighbors or financial worries.

Recently, with the help of a federal grant, the school joined forces with Kapi'olani Community College and Good Beginnings Alliance to offer more programs for students and parents, from a health fair that touches on the importance of dental hygiene and how to spot bed bugs and lice to a program designed to stress the importance of parental involvement in elementary school education.

Silberstein said many of her parents don't put education first "because survival is more important."

Pursuing racial reconciliation

    The people of Nineveh believed God's message, and from the greatest to the least, they decided to go without food and wear sackcloth to show their sorrow. When the king of Nineveh heard what Jonah was saying, he stepped down from his throne and took off his royal robes. He dressed himself in sackcloth and sat on a heap of ashes. Then the king and his nobles sent this decree throughout the city: "No one, not even the animals, may eat or drink anything at all. Everyone is required to wear sackcloth and pray earnestly to God. Everyone must turn fromt heir evil ways and stop all their violence. Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will have pity on us and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us." (NLT)

Tuesday, for the first time, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an official apology for slavery and segregation. Over the past few years, five southern states have apologized, but efforts in Congress had failed. Congress has issued apologies before, to Japanese-Americans for their internment during World War II and to native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893, writes an Associated Press reporter. In 2005, the Senate apologized for failing to pass anti-lynching laws. But never for slavery.

It is appropriate, because ultimately it was government policies that were both complicit in and directly responsible for this great inhumanity and injustice. Nobody alive in America today participated in slavery, many have no ancestors who did, and large numbers of families came to this land only after slavery was officially abolished -- but all white Americans have benefited from the poisonous legacy of slavery and discrimination.

The language of the resolution is clear on the importance of apologizing as a step forward. After recounting the evil of slavery, it concludes:

Whereas a genuine apology is an important and necessary first step in the process of racial reconciliation;

Whereas an apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs committed can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help Americans confront the ghosts of their past;

Whereas it is important for this country, which legally recognized slavery through its Constitution and its laws, to make a formal apology for slavery and for its successor, Jim Crow, so that it can move forward and seek reconciliation, justice, and harmony for all of its citizens: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives:

(1) acknowledges that slavery is incompatible with the basic founding principles recognized in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal;

(2) acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow;

(3) apologizes to African Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow; and

(4) expresses its commitment to rectify the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African Americans under slavery and Jim Crow and to stop the occurrence of human rights violations in the future.

I hope the Senate will quickly pass a parallel resolution and that President Bush will publicly endorse it. It would be an important day in U.S. history.

Which superhero are you?

Superman 80% Spider-Man 65% Supergirl 61% Wonder Woman 51% Robin 50% The Flash 50% Iron Man 45% Green Lantern 45% Batman 40% Catwoman 35% Hulk 35%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Faith and Politics

I believe the religious landscape of the 2008 political year will be dramatically different than it was in the 2004 election. And it's quite amazing how much the issue of faith and politics has changed in such a short time. There are two fundamental shifts which have occurred, and, taken together, they constitute a real sea change in American politics.

First, in what TIME magazine has called "a leveling of the praying field" the Democrats now speak as much about faith and values as the Republicans do. For example, it has been the Democratic presidential candidates who have devoted the most time in outreach to faith communities in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina - not the Republicans. We have seen top level faith outreach operations as central to the Democratic candidates' campaign strategies and decision-making, their "faith forums" in primary states, newsletters on family and values, and even gospel music tours. All three Democratic front-runners have spoken quite comfortably about their personal faith and its relationship to public life in national forums and debates, at religious institutions and congregations, and in media interviews. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards frequently speak of their history as committed lay persons in their denomination and know the religious community as their own; and Barack Obama sometimes sounds like a public theologian. All three, as well as other Democratic candidates, have explicitly connected their faith to a broad range of issues from poverty to health care, criminal justice, HIV/AIDS, human rights, and to war and peace.

In a striking contrast this year, the Republican Party, which has so associated itself with religion and "values voters" in recent years, has had a serious "God and marriage problem," as many have pointed out. Several of the Republican frontrunners like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson have often seemed uncomfortable and awkward when the language of faith comes up, and, as many have noted, the only one among the early Republican frontrunners with a history of just one wife was the Mormon, Mitt Romney, whose minority religion is suspect among many conservative evangelicals. The candidate with the strongest Christian identity, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, couldn't get the backing of the key leaders of Religious Right and finally surged to the top tier by appealing on his own to the grassroots religious base of the party in places like Iowa and South Carolina. The contrast from 2004, when many in the GOP were describing theirs as "God's own party," is quite stunning.

It is now much clearer that "God is not a Republican or a Democrat," as our bumper sticker from the last campaign read; and that is a good thing. There should be no religious litmus tests for politics - committed Christians will, and should be, on both sides of the political aisle. Indeed, people of faith should never be in any party's or candidate's political pocket and should, ideally, be the ultimate swing vote because of their moral independence from partisan politics. Let's all try to remember that this political year.

Martin Luther once said that he would rather be governed by a competent Turk than by an incompetent Christian, which is a good piece of wisdom to keep in mind this or any election year. What a candidate's moral compass is should be more important than his/her theology or the doctrines of his/her religious tradition. What kind of leader will a candidate be, what are his/her guiding personal and social values, and what is his/her strength of character? These are all key questions.

Second, and even more important than the religious identities of the candidates on either side, is how the agenda of faith communities has undergone a very significant shift. Very clearly, abortion and gay marriage are not the only overriding "moral issues" for many people of faith now, though the sanctity of life (more consistently applied) and healthy families (without scapegoats) are still critical concerns. But now other key moral and religious issues have taken on great importance in the agendas of faith communities. These issues include both global and domestic poverty, pandemic diseases which ravage the developing world, the extreme violations of human rights in places like Darfur, the alarming threats of climate change and the imperatives of "creation care" of the environment, and the need for a more ethical response to the genuine threats of terrorism and a foreign policy more consistent with our best moral values.

Many recent polls show that the votes of millions in the faith community are "in play" this election season, and whichever candidate - Democrat or Republican - speaks the language of moral values and seriously addresses the wider and deeper religious agenda will find resonance this year among the faithful. And for many in the faith community, both character and competence really both matter in choosing the next president. I hear strong positive responses among people of faith when they see the qualities of moral leadership in presidential candidates.

On the Democratic side, I hear great appreciation for John Edwards' passionate and persistent commitment to make poor people a political priority and his challenging the control of the wealthy and powerful over our political process. I hear great attraction, especially among a younger generation, to Barack Obama's call for change to a new kind of politics, beyond left and right, which actually finds solutions to our most pressing problems; and for the first African American President. And I see a real appeal, especially among women, for Hillary Clinton's persistent commitment to issues like children and health care, along with her experience and readiness that says a woman could be the president of the U.S. for the very first time. All three have been willing to challenge the secular rejection of religion and values talk which still exists in their party, and, in the general election, whoever secures the Democratic nomination will be watched carefully by the religious community to see if they will also take on other party orthodoxies on issues like abortion.

One of the highpoints for me of the campaign thus far came in a Republican debate where both Mike Huckabee and John McCain defended the humanity of undocumented people in the midst of an extended attack on "illegal aliens" by other candidates. In the face of some of the most heated rhetoric, John McCain asked his colleagues to remember that the people they were all talking about were "also the children of God." And in defending his inclusion of the children of the undocumented in his state's scholarship programs, Mike Huckabee stood his ground and said the U.S. was not the kind of country that punished children for the mistakes of their parents. Both have been willing to challenge their party on other issues too - McCain supports both comprehensive immigration and campaign finance reform; and Huckabee was recently accused of being a "Christian socialist" by a leading economic conservative because of how he spent money on poor people in Arkansas. One political commentator on the Republican side told me he thought McCain and Huckabee have been rising in the polls because of the "character" they have shown in these debates. On the other hand, despite Rudy Giuliani's popularity in the Republican polls, conservative evangelical leaders like Richard Land insist that their constituency will not vote for him, not merely because of his stances on abortion and gay marriage, but because of his own marital behavior and history. And the evangelical concerns I hear about Mitt Romney are less about his Mormon religion than whether his changes on key moral issues for them are ultimately trustworthy.

All of that suggests that moral values will indeed be a key criteria for religious and "values voters" this election season; but that the definition and range of those moral values will be much wider and deeper than ever before. This time, more than any election in many years, the votes of many in the faith community are still undecided and will be influenced by whoever can win their support with a genuine moral discourse on politics and an agenda of both social and political transformation.