Mahalo, mahalo, mahalo to Hortense and Petrus Bekker family of Haiku for their overwhelmingly generous support of Ka Hale A Ke Ola Homeless Resource Centers and their mission to provide housing to families in Maui County.

Due to their contribution, our program will be able to obtain additional permanent housing that can be used as “bridge housing.”

Bridge housing is used to give families and singles an interim place to live until they can obtain alternate permanent housing.

Most often, our families sign up on a waitlist for low-income housing, but the waitlists are long, and it may take up to two years before they can get into low-income housing. Families would not be able to stay in the shelter that long as our state contract expresses the goal to get families into permanent housing as quickly as possible.

The shelter program goal is to get families into housing within 90 days; however, the average length of stay is approximately six months.

With this bridge housing, we would be able to move families out of the shelter as they wait for low-income or other housing and bring in a new family for services into the shelter.

Working with foundations and families like the Bekkers, the center can help in a concrete manner to help families in need.

Monique R. Ibarra,

Executive director of Ka Hale A Ke Ola

Wailuku