Father Du Teil would be proud
30 years after Father Claude Du Teil began his peanut butter ministry for the homeless, his widow Bert visits the IHS and executive director Connie Mitchell
By Chad Pata
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him back on the streets, so they let him spend the night.
This practice was still illegal at this point, but Claude felt he had an obligation to the people. An out-of-work architect by the name of Bob Peterson offered to stay overnight with the men, and IHS officially changed from a “soup kitchen” to a shelter.
When the police got wind of this lawless activity, they quickly responded by bringing more people in need of aid.
Soon Mayor Frank Fasi got involved, laws were changed and the rest is history.
Today IHS has two shelters, one on Sumner Street for men and one on Ka’aahi Street for women and families. In total they have provided more than 2 million bed nights to the impecunious people of Oahu. On average they provide 800-plus meals a day, still often-times peanut butter sandwiches, totaling more than 5 million meals since that fateful July 1, 1978.
Honolulu’s defender of the indi-gent passed in January 1997, but IHS continues to grow and evolve in his name, currently under the watchful eye of executive director Connie Mitchell. Services now range from community re-entry programs for recently freed prisoners to employment placement and rental assistance for at-risk families.
“If we can stop a person from becoming homeless it is a much better use of resources,” says Mitchell, who took the helm in 2006. “So one of our programs is for people that are being evicted or they have to move someplace new and they don’t have a deposit, we’ll help them with deposit and/or first month’s rent to help people transition.”
The IHS also has had to evolve as the problem does. In recent years there has been a spike in migrants to the Islands becoming homeless. By IHS’s numbers, they make up 25 to 30 percent of the new homeless on Oahu.
Many of them are Micronesians utilizing the Micronesian Compact that was meant to compensate them for land misused by the U.S. government. They were coming to Oahu on cheap flights seeking medical care and education and instead they became instantly homeless.
Last year the state spent somewhere between $80 million and $90 million on these recent immigrants while only being compensated $10 million by the U.S. government, according to Mitchell. This leaves IHS trying to catch those falling through the cracks. It does, however, give us one reason to be thankful for the rising gas prices.
“We really hope that rising airfares will discourage these people from coming,” says Mitchell. “A lot of them got here on $99 fares. We are hoping to see a decrease, and we have noticed fewer people turning up homeless from that particular group.”
Another real issue is the pushing of the homeless out of Honolulu, into the more rural areas of the island. Mitchell understands the importance of keeping our beaches and parks clean and safe for our No. 1 industry, but it is making the job of getting these people back on their feet that much more difficult.
“The homeless tell you with their feet where they are going, and they are moving out of the urban core to Leeward beaches and the North Shore,” says Mitchell. “This is a real concern for me with IHS being in the urban core.
“We are really looking for people to get back to work, and when you move out to those areas where there are not as many opportunities to work it means you have to travel into the city to work. We just hope there will be more economic development in those other areas and as they do that it will be great because it helps spread everything out.”
While the work never ends, one does have to stop occasionally and
acknowledge what you have accomplished. The IHS will celebrate three decades of helping the disenfranchised with its 30th annual Gala Celebration.
They are holding an art and poetry contest for kids, asking them what the new IHS song Never Judge a Book means to them. Prizes range from a new iPod to tickets to the musical Truly Dually that IHS workers Michael Ullman and Roslyn Catracchia co-wrote. All entries must be submitted by Aug. 1.
The musical will be staged in Mamiya Theatre at Saint Louis School Aug. 15-17. It deals with the issues of homelessness and the dignity that all individuals deserve. The play centers on a typical family and their interaction with a homeless man, spanning the prejudice against street people to an understanding of what it means to be human.
For information on the contest, musical or just looking to volunteer, you can look them up on the web at www.ihshawaii.org. Volunteers are welcome for a wide range of activities from cooking and cleaning to basic computer tutoring.
The most important thing for many destitute people is just the gift of your time.
“When other people take the time to pay attention to a homeless person, it becomes very special to them,” says Mitchell. “To a lot of them they have become nameless, faceless people, and when people do choose to invest in them, that is a very precious investment.”
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