Nimitz Highway homeless evictions - Hawaii News Now - KGMB and KHNL

By Roger Mari - bio | email

HONOLULU - (KHNL) it's time to pack up and move for dozens of homeless living under Nimitz Highway. They have been ordered to leave their makeshift homes by tomorrow morning.

It's more than just a group of people without a roof over their heads. The area under the Nimitz Highway has become a community with many of its residents looking out for one another.

Jarod Wong's home for the past five years has been under the Nimitz Highway.

He says being homeless isn't easy when you have no water, electricity, or bathrooms.

"We live in sub-human conditions. Really all we have time to think of is what we're going to eat that day, if our friends are alive and o.k.," says Jarod Wong.

But they are just some of his concerns. With a deadline quickly approaching, he feels he will be losing more than just a place to eat and sleep.

"The people I met out here, they've not only become my friends and my loved ones, but they're the only family I got." says Wong.

Complaints from the community about health and safety reasons prompted officials to have everyone evicted from the government land. Jarod Wong now wonders where he and other homeless will end up.

"Homeless is a problem for everybody they say. Well, guess what? We're homeless and it's the biggest problem for us," says Jarod Wong.

A medical condition has hampered his attempts to get a job. He wants to change people's perception that all of the homeless are lazy.

"When you're homeless, it's impossible to get that one step up. Without a phone number and a home address most jobs won't hire you," says Jarod Wong.

With nowhere else to go after tomorrow, Jarod Wong is hopeful his biological family will allow him back into their lives.

"I would go in a heartbeat, I would hate to feel like a burden on them but I would go, I miss my family," says Jarod Wong

Sheriff's deputies will go ahead with their eviction plans tomorrow morning beginning at 7 a-m.