text: The whole mentality of prioritizing national and global economic growth and development (including luxury condos for the world’s rich) has helped Hawaii have some of the highest housing costs in the U.S., along with low wages which force poor (and usually sick) people and working families with children to live on the sidewalks. Further, “the government’s persistent failure to meet its public housing needs” has more to do with the Republican’s dismantling of national government social and other services for the past 40 years, which has resulted in de-funding state and/or city programs that were designed to be catchment systems for the poor. We cry for “the government” to “do something” about problems that have been created by the nature of our economic system. So let the private sector help build the affordable housing needed…or not…more than likely not, since the luxury condos bring in huge profits while affordable housing does not.