It’s a little past 9 a.m. when a guy pulls up in a shiny Harley-Davidson.

“I got a Macbook Pro,” he says. “Can anyone use it? I don’t want someone to pawn it. I want someone to use it.”

Alika Campbell, the longtime program manager at the Youth Outreach house on Keoniana Street in Waikiki, steps outside.

“Not at the moment,” he tells the guy. “But I can hold onto it until a person who needs it shows up.”

Turns out the guy on the Harley, the one who wants to donate a Macbook Pro, once found a safe haven here, in this welcoming cottage. Campbell remembers him.

Since 1989, this program — referred to as YO! and run by both Hale Kipa and Waikiki Health — has been serving hundreds of runaway, homeless and street-identified youth and young people up to age 22 on Oahu every year.

Four days a week they can come — no questions asked — to YO! for food, hot showers, access to health care services, employment assistance, clothing, use of washers and dryers, or just to nap on a comfortable couch in a safe place.

The staff here is friendly, non-judgemental and trustworthy — exactly what young people in crisis need.

In addition, outreach workers go into the community — mostly Waikiki but as far as Waianae — to meet unsheltered and runaway youth where they are, offering snacks, condoms and other essentials, while letting them know about services they can use, including YO!

“We’re a safe respite for them,” explains Campbell, 53, who has been at YO! since 1997. “We want to meet their basic needs, plant some seeds and connect them to resources and services when they’re ready.”

He walks me through the facility. There’s a kitchen where the staff prepares and serves 3,000 meals every year. (Restaurants like Gyotaku Japanese Restaurants and churches like the Parish of St. Clement’s Episocopal Church and Co-Cathedral of Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus donate meals, too. The Honolulu Masonic lodge brings pizza and Korean takeout twice a month.)

The living area has two couches, a flat-screen TV and a selection of board games. Another room is outfitted with computers so kids can work on getting high school diplomas through GED or HiSET programs, or just browse the Internet and play video games. (They’re teens after all.)

There’s also a private bathroom with a hot shower and hotel bathroom amenities — soaps, shampoos, lotions — they can take. Outside are lockers where they can keep their valuables safe, a small workout area with punching bags, a basketball hoop, picnic tables and two sets of washers and dryers.

In a storage shed is what Campbell calls YO! Mart, stocked with clothing and shoes free for the taking.

Kids and young adults can drop in to YO! between 3 and 6 p.m. four days a week — which is after school hours. (The house is closed on Wednesdays and weekends, and it’s not a shelter where people can spend the night.)

At that time the medical clinic is also open. It’s staffed with a nurse, physician assistant or doctor from Waikiki Health. Twice a month it offers dental exams (which isn’t very popular with young people, no surprise.)

Once a week a psychologist holds “talk story clinics,” to help them navigate mental health issues.

The program is supported primarily through grants, with some federal, state and city funding and private donations.

Last year the YO! house serviced roughly 3,000 young people, many of them repeat visitors. The majority — over 85% — are from Oahu; the rest are split between mainland kids and ones from neighbor islands.

Most of them are using something — alcohol, weed or stronger — and very few attend school with any regularity. Some have been kicked out of their homes, some have run away, others have chosen a life on the streets.

“They all have something going on, whether that’s mental health or substance use,” Campbell says. “We all do. It’s about helping them manage that ‘something.’ It’s about pointing them in the right direction for help.”

Lately, though, finding these young people has been a challenge.

The sit-lie ban, which was first instituted in Waikiki in 2014, and the recent Covid-19 pandemic have made it difficult for outreach workers to locate homeless youth. Once it was easier — many of them congregated in the same places, Campbell says — but now they’re scattered.

The numbers of young people using YO!’s services have dropped in half — and Campbell doesn’t think there are fewer runaways and homeless young people out there. They’re just more difficult to find.

“It just makes our work that much harder,” Campbell says.

It’s Thursday and a local church is bringing chili to YO! to serve. Campbell expects about a dozen young people to show up for meals today. As the staff gets ready for the day, a friendly black cat named Harley, who roams the neighborhood, stops by.

“Every morning he shows up,” Campbell says, with a smile. “We’re like, ʻCome on in.’’

Campbell, a graduate of Punahou School with a master’s degree in social work from the University of Hawaii Manoa, says youth and young people on the streets have specific needs and challenges.

For starters, their biological, developmental and experiential ages vary. Meaning a homeless 11-year-old may behave older because of her experiences on the streets but developmentally younger than her biological age.

And young people often don’t have the life skills needed to survive on their own. They weren’t given the opportunity or didn’t have the proper behavior modeled for them at home.

And street culture is tough. These young people have to worry about getting beaten up, having their stuff stolen, feeling lonely and scared.

At the end of the day, though, they’re still kids. They want social connections, they want to belong, they rebel and experiment, they want to watch YouTube and TikTok.

“The faces change, but the drama stays the same,” Campbell says.

There are different approaches to dealing with the homeless crisis, here and elsewhere. Some believe in the housing-first approach, where providing people with safe, stable housing is the first step.

The Residential Youth Services and Empowerment program, which partners with YO!, started in 2018 as the state’s first emergency housing shelter for youth ages 14 to 24. Hale Kipa also offers emergency shelters for youth up to age 17, with 16 total beds.

But that’s not enough.

Campbell believes in providing a spectrum of care, from outreach to housing readiness, with support and resources for young people along the way.

“The mistake communities are making is putting people in housing but without enough wraparound support, and that’s especially true for the young adult crowd,” he says. ”They don’t have life skills. They need a safe space to learn and make mistakes with a safety net for them.

“They need a full continuum of care; we only have pieces of it,” he continues. “We keep chasing ʻthe solution,’ but the homeless situation is complicated and multifaceted. There is no one solution.”

Campbell would love to see more funding for outreach, more emergency shelters and
transitional housing, more programs to help Hawaii’s street youth connect to the resources they need to become independent and get off the streets.

And, of course, more low-barrier, safe havens like YO! He recalls the guy who rode up on his Harley, wanting to donate a Macbook Pro. Campbell says he comes a couple of times a year with donations.

“Nobody goes on to become fancy billionaires,” Campbell says. “But most of them grow up and hopefully do OK. The fact that we don’t see them as adults on the streets, that’s a good sign.”

If interested in helping, YO! needs youth-friendly clothing, especially for boys (not aloha shirts or dress clothes); toothbrushes and toothpaste; travel-size toiletries like soaps and shampoos; canned goods, especially with pop tops; backpacks; water bottles; socks and shoes.

Drop off donations before 3 p.m. Monday through Friday at 415 Keoniana St. in Waikiki. YO! will also take hot meals. Call (808) 942-5858 to learn more.

Civil Beat’s community health coverage is supported by the Swayne Family Fund of Hawaii Community Foundation, the Cooke Foundation, Atherton Family Foundation and Papa Ola Lokahi.