WAI'ANAE — The state is considering a number of potential sites on the Wai'anae Coast for emergency homeless shelters, including land next to the Wai'anae Boat Harbor once proposed for the controversial "Camp Hope" shelter, an official said yesterday.

"It's a prospect. Right now I'm looking at all lands available," said Kaulana Park, designated by Gov. Linda Lingle as the point man for dealing with the growing homelessness problem on the Wai'anae Coast.

Other possibilities include property behind the Makaha Marketplace and numerous sites controlled by the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, Park said.

"Actually, at DHHL, about 75 percent of our lands in O'ahu are located out in the Leeward Coast," Park said. "A large majority of our people are out there."

In 2003, a grass-roots coalition proposed erecting a homeless shelter called "Camp Hope" on five acres of undeveloped land next to the Wai'anae Boat Harbor.

But when the idea was brought up at a public meeting that year, residents loudly rejected the plan.

Now, with the number of homeless people here more than triple what it was in 2002, and hundreds of illegal homeless campsites covering 16 miles of beaches from Kahe Beach Park to Keawa'ula Bay, some residents are ready to try any solution.

Meanwhile, some area homeless people were taking a wait-and-see attitude.

"We don't know for sure what's happening," said Colin "Small Boy" Valentine Kahui, a homeless camper at Ma'ili Beach Park. "I don't know if I'd go to a shelter. It depends. I'm not going to jump in there without knowing the house rules."

Nearby, Teresa Kaio, 42, sat in the shade of a tent with her 2-year-old grandson, Ua Tui Kaio.

"This might be good," she said of the emergency shelter plan. "But why are they just now doing it? This has been going on for years."

Kaio lived in Kalihi, she said. But when the rent went up, she got in trouble with the manager and was evicted. For two months she's lived on Ma'ili Beach with her grandson. If it wasn't for the kindness of church groups that feed her, she'd be destitute, she said.

"I don't have income. I don't even have food stamps. I don't have anything," she said. "Right now, all I've got is God."

"We've heard it all before," said Rick Chaves, who is staying at Ma'ili Beach Park with his companion, Elliejo Kahu.

"In December we were living at Pearl Ridge Towers," said Chaves, 45, who said he had watched the homeless population on the beach double in the past few months. "We came here in January. The rent went from $1,200 to $1,600 a month, just like that."

Park said the scope of the problem will call for a broader range of facilities and services than are offered at the Next Step shelter set up by the state in Kaka'ako after the city closed Ala Moana Beach Park to homeless people.

Park also said shelters are only part of the answer.

"There's going to be more to it than shelters," he said. "We've got to be solutions-driven. We've got to make things happen now. You have to have some kind of component where we can help the homeless by getting them back into society — not just to care and shelter them, but to help motivate them to better their lives."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.