Videotaping Law Enforcement & Videotaping the Homeless in Hawaii

[Procrustes Stretched]

Videotaping Law Enforcement & Videotaping the Homeless in Hawaii

The state representative who made a name for himself as a fighter against the homeless, by public stunts such as destroying the shopping carts of the homeless with a sledgehammer, was put in the hospital with serious head injuries after a run in with homeless people. His crime? Videotaping the homeless.

People here at USMB as well as people all over the web (wisdom of the majority?) have celebrated the beating of the state representative as justice exacted. But what kind of justice? The state representative was not smashing shopping carts as a political stunt when he was viciously attacked. He was merely videotaping homeless people living on the street. The homeless people themselves have apologized and admitted what they had done was wrong. In their own defense, they use an analogy of some stranger coming into a home and videotaping the people living there without their permission.

Now the people celebrating the attack the homeless themselves have admitted was morally wrong? These people insist the former actions of the state representative justify the vicious attack. By now some of you must see where this is going...

When law enforcement is being videotaped without their permission and they overreact or react to prevent people from interfering with law enforcement performing their duties, would people who insist the state representative's previous history justified an attack, agree law enforcement should be able to attack people videotaping them, if it can be shown the people videotaping them have past criminal behaviors?

 

[waltky]

Mebbe dey could build adobe homes for the homeless in the west...

Hawaii considering grass huts to help homeless
January 11, 2016 — Hawaii lawmakers are considering a unique solution to the housing crisis: They want to make it possible for people to live in traditional Hawaiian grass huts.

Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland is introducing a bill in the state Legislature's upcoming session that would let officials set aside land to build Native Hawaiian thatched homes. She discussed that and other bills designed to alleviate homelessness at a meeting of the Housing and Homeless Task Force on Monday. "There is an interest in recapturing some of the traditional ways of living among our people here in Hawaii," Chun Oakland said.

Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, a cultural practitioner, approached the senator with the idea. Officials creating housing solutions should take into account the culture of the people they're trying to help, including the fact that Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders have large extended families, Wong-Kalu said. "We have a different culture other than what housing will allow," Wong-Kalu said. "When you look at shelters for the houseless, it's all based on the nuclear family, and that's not our culture."

Not everyone at the meeting was immediately on board with the proposal. "This doesn't make any sense," said Shannon Wood, co-founder of the Windward Ahupuaa Alliance, a nonprofit organization that advocates for smart growth solutions. "This is 2016, not 1616." Wood asked whether there would be toilets in the huts, and Chun Oakland said the details haven't been fully worked out.

Proponents say they don't know of any people in Hawaii currently living in the traditional structures, called "hale," but it is technically legal. They say traditional hale are cheaper and more environmentally friendly than other types of housing. The Legislature approved a law in 2007 pushing the idea of traditional Hawaiian architecture as part of a package of solutions to the state's housing and homelessness crisis. That bill required each of the state's counties to come up with their own permitting process within a year. But only Maui County came up with a building code, and it's for nonresidential structures.

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[waltky]

Number of homeless students up 38% since 2009-10...

1,301,239: Homeless Students in Public Schools Up 38% Since 2009-10
April 12, 2016 | The number of homeless students is steadily rising in this country, up 38.44 percent since the 2009-10 school year, based on data submitted by state and local education agencies, including those in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

The U.S. Education Department says 1,301,239 homeless students were enrolled in the nation's public schools in the 2013-14 school year, the most recent year for which numbers are available. That's a 6.67 percent increase from the 1,219,818 homeless students enrolled in 2012-13; a 14.86 percent increase from the 1,132,853 enrolled in 2011-12; a 22.09 percent increase from the 1,065,794 in 2010-11; and a 38.44 percent increase from the 939,903 in 2009-2010. The greatest growth in the most recent school year was seen in preschool-aged children and ninth grade students.

Homeless students are defined as those who "lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence." These students fall into four categories for data collection purposes, including sheltered (living in homeless shelters, other transitional programs, or awaiting foster care placement); unsheltered (living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, etc.); living in hotels or motels; and doubled up (sharing housing with others for hardship reasons). In 2013-14, the vast majority of homeless students (989,844 or 76 percent) fell into the doubled-up category, followed by those in shelters (186,265 or 15 percent), those in motels/hotels (80,124 or 6 percent) and the unsheltered (42,003 or 3 percent).

The Education Department places homeless students in four subgroups. Homeless children with disabilities comprise the largest subgroup, followed by homeless students with limited English proficiency; unaccompanied homeless youth who are not in the physical custody of a parent or guardian; and migratory children (related to seasonal agricultural work). Some children fall into more than one of those subgroups, and each of those four subgroups saw growth over the three-year period 2011-12 through 2013-14. The nation's public schools (including D.C. and Puerto Rico) are required by law to provide all children with equal access to education at the elementary and secondary levels, regardless of their immigration status, but the Education Department does not categorize homeless students based on whether they are in the country legally or illegally.

However, high-immigration states such as California, New York and Texas have the largest numbers of homeless students, while Wyoming, Vermont and South Dakota have some of the lowest numbers, based on data compiled for the Education Department by the National Center for Homeless Education. Notably, Tennessee's population of homeless students more than doubled year-to-year in 2013-14, increasing 107.15 percent to 29,663 -- the largest percentage increase of all the states. As President Obama noted in December 2014, "Nashville’s got one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in the country." The president went there to take part in an immigration town hall. He hailed the "new Nashvillians” as coming from Somalia, Nepal, Laos, Mexico, and Bangladesh. "And Nashville happens to be the home of the largest Kurdish community in the United States as well," Obama said at the time.

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