Throat cancer patient living in car pleads for housing help amid Kauai’s homelessness crisis

By Arielle Argel

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    KAUAI COUNTY, Hawaii (KITV) — Miles Martinez is a 68-year-old man who has been living in his car since February. Martinez recently got surgery for throat cancer. He said he needs to find housing to help with his health.

“I did two months on Oahu at Queens, and I was already homeless. Came back to Kauai in June and been in my car since then. I’m on a feeding tube, which I feed myself four times a day,” said Martinez.

Martinez said he is frustrated and just wants someone to help him.

“I’m just living in my car. I’ve exhausted all contacts as far as Catholic Charities, Family Life Center, KEO, everyone,” said Martinez.

Director of Kauai County’s housing agency, Adam Roversi, said finding more housing is one of the biggest challenges when addressing homelessness on the island.

“We regularly are working with the array of nonprofit groups that serve the homeless community here to do outreach work to various encampment areas, beaches, and parks to meet with homeless people and collect their information and provide them assistance. But there simply are not physical units to place them in, even if they’re interested in going,” said Roversi.

Currently, there are over 480 homeless individuals on Kauai. The county has one homeless facility with 28 units.

Roversi said the county plans to open 32 more units in the next month and three housing facilities across the island will begin construction next year. Each facility will be on different parts of the island to accommodate the homeless population in those areas.

“If we get all of them that we have on paper planned for development, we will have sufficient units to house roughly 360 individuals. Which does not completely eliminate homelessness, but it gets a long way to that goal,” said Roversi.

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