The Independent | 96,648 Hawaiians are now members of the “hidden homeless” community.

Some live in tents, others in cars – but Hawaii would rather their extreme poor lived on the mainland. Guy Adams reports from Honolulu on a crackdown the US doesn't want the world to see

AP

Left: Barack Obama and his children in Kailua; right: a man cooks his dinner at a camp off the main beach in Honolulu

Beverly Paracuelles wakes up each morning to a view of palm trees, golden sands, and azure tropical seas. She spends her days wandering along the world-famous beaches of Oahu's northern shore. But don't go telling her that life must be a dream.

Home for the 54-year-old former nursing assistant is neither one of the ocean-view mansions, nor the $600-a-night hotel rooms which dot Hawaii's most populated island. Instead, it's a battered Toyota van. Inside, in an area that measures six by eight feet, she must eat, sleep, and store all of her worldly goods.

"I've lived here for three years now, since I lost my job, and the depressing thing is that I can't see how things are going to get much better," she says, patting one of her three chihuahua dogs. "I wouldn't say that it's much of a life. I guess, like the old saying goes, I'd call it more of an existence."

Paracuelles is one of more than 4,000 homeless people, from a population of around 950,000, who contribute to Oahu's unwanted status as one of the street-sleeping capitals of America. Disabled by chronic back problems, and unable to find employment, she must instead get by with $314 a month in food stamps, plus petty cash earned selling necklaces that she makes from seashells.

Despite its "aloha" reputation, Hawaii currently has the third-highest ratio of homelessness of any state in the nation, behind Oregon and Nevada. Since the number of Americans living below the poverty line rose above 15 per cent last week, the problem here, like elsewhere, seems likely to get worse before it gets better. In addition to the likes of Paracuelles, a recent study by the research firm SMS found that 96,648 Hawaiians are now members of the "hidden homeless" community, a demographic which contains people squatting, living in temporary accommodation, or staying with friends or family members. Another 262,000 people – a staggering one in five residents of the seven islands – are classed as being "at risk" of homelessness.

You don't have to go far from the high-rise glamour of Waikiki Beach, Hawaii's most famous tourist centre, to appreciate the human effects of this statistical burden. Beggars throng the traffic lights of central Honolulu. They while away days in parks, and sleep in wasteland tent cities. In many ways, their sheer ubiquity makes the city of Barack Obama's birth resemble a Third World metropolis.

Venture into the countryside of Oahu, and you'll catch glimpses of tarpaulin, often in deep undergrowth a short distance from the road. Each one is a casual dwelling. There are several hundred of them, on a relatively small island which measures roughly 20 miles by 30 across.

The problem has not escaped Hawaii's ruling class

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