NPR: Hawaii draws tourists — and homeless — from mainland
Wayne Yoshioka
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Reporter Wayne Yoshioka of KHPR in Honolulu explores the increasing number of people from the mainland lining up for homeless benefits in Hawaii. The segment, which was picked up by National Public Radio, tells the story of a shelter resident who spent $400 on a plane ticket to Hawaii and earns as much as $40 a day recycling plastic bottles. The report says: “And he sleeps at the…shelter for $3 a day, with three free meals, $200 worth of food stamps and the state’s free health-care program. ‘I went to the dentist today, and I had a tooth pulled,’ [Gary] Phillips says. ‘It cost me nothing.’” The piece notes that the shelter’s funding comes mostly from taxes and that 28 percent of it is spent on people from the mainland.
Today’s Tip: Break down data into smaller pieces for fresher angles.
Wayne’s segment follows an article in the Star-Bulletin in Honolulu looking at how the state is helping homeless people.
- Children in Hawaii were photographed by flickr.com user im4maui.
Charts in that story break down data from the University of Hawaii at Manoa by race and other factors. The increase in the number of mainland residents using homeless shelters is a very small part of the broader story of homelessness in Hawaii. By isolating the data into a separate piece, Wayne gives listeners a look at a generous benefit system being taken advantage of by some people. The same approach to zeroing in on data can be used with unemployment figures, which can be examined by age, gender, race/ethnicity and geography.
