Jason Schwartz w Jordan Hocker Candidates for County Council- 6-10-22
Summary & Timestamped Full Transcript Below…
The video features an in-depth interview with Jordan Hocker, a young candidate running for the Maui County Council representing the Upcountry seat. Hocker shares her background as a community advocate focused on homeless advocacy, maternal health, and sustainable science management. She decided to run after recognizing the lack of challengers for the seat and the need for fresh voices and solutions in local government, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on Maui’s working class.
Throughout the conversation, Hocker addresses key local issues such as water infrastructure challenges in Upcountry Maui, the housing crisis, homelessness, and economic diversification. She highlights the urgency of addressing water scarcity with innovative technologies like atmospheric water generation, which is largely overlooked by current policymakers. She also critiques the slow governmental response to homelessness and affordable housing, emphasizing the need for compassionate, pragmatic solutions like managed encampments and housing for all, including the most vulnerable populations.
Hocker stresses the importance of balancing the interests of longtime residents with development pressures, advocating for affordable housing that remains affordable in perpetuity, paired with adequate infrastructure. She challenges the prevailing status quo in Maui’s political and economic systems, advocating for a wider adoption of sustainable practices and community-driven solutions. The candidate also calls for increased community engagement and collaboration between government, nonprofits, and private sectors to tackle Maui’s intertwined crises.
The interview closes with Hocker expressing her commitment to serving working-class families and future generations, emphasizing community strength, resilience, and hope. She encourages voters to participate actively in elections to support leaders who prioritize long-term sustainability, equity, and inclusiveness.
Highlights
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[01:33] ? Jordan Hocker’s background in homeless advocacy, maternal health, and sustainable science management.
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[06:35] ? Water infrastructure issues in Upcountry Maui and the challenges faced by farmers and residents.
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[10:08] ?ﾸﾏ Innovative water solutions like extracting water from air as an untapped resource.
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[22:05] ? Affordable housing challenges, including short-term affordability and infrastructure concerns.
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[29:54] ?ﾸﾏ The homelessness crisis, myths about homeless people, and the need for compassionate policies.
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[36:10] ? Critique of current administration’s failure to treat homelessness as an emergency.
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[51:37] ❤️ Emphasis on community strength, resilience, and working for future generations.
Key Insights
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[01:33] ? Jordan Hocker’s multidimensional background enables her to approach Maui’s challenges holistically. Her experience in advocacy and sustainable science grounds her campaign in both empathy and evidence-based solutions, crucial for addressing complex issues like homelessness and environmental sustainability.
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[06:35] ? Upcountry Maui’s water infrastructure is fragile, relying heavily on distant reservoirs. The local farming and ranching community face uncertainty due to drought and water meter allocation issues, highlighting a critical need for proactive infrastructure planning that protects both residents and the environment.
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[10:08] ?ﾸﾏ The concept of pulling water from the air represents an innovative but underexplored avenue to augment Maui’s water supply. Such technologies could decentralize water access, reduce pressure on current systems, and increase community resilience, yet political and bureaucratic inertia has prevented their adoption.
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[22:05] ? Affordable housing in Maui suffers from a systemic flaw: affordability is often temporary, leading to displacement when properties convert to market rate after a decade. Hocker argues for perpetual affordability paired with smart infrastructure investments to genuinely support working families and preserve Maui’s cultural fabric.
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[29:54] ?ﾸﾏ The homelessness crisis is multifaceted and urgent. Many homeless individuals are employed yet unable to secure housing due to systemic barriers. Current county efforts, like the “compassionate relocation” program, are inadequate, and there is a critical need for safe, managed encampments and supportive services that meet people where they are.
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[36:10] ? Political leadership and administrative attitudes are pivotal. Hocker criticizes the current administration for lacking empathy and urgency in addressing homelessness, calling for a shift to leaders who prioritize dignity, inclusivity, and practical emergency responses, including increased funding and infrastructure for housing and services.
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[51:37] ❤️ Hocker’s vision centers on community strength and mutual aid, rooted in Maui’s cultural values. She emphasizes the importance of decisions that provide long-term hope for keiki (children) and kupuna (elders), reflecting a governance philosophy that balances immediate needs with sustainable futures. This approach promotes social cohesion and resilience amid growing economic and environmental pressures.
Additional Context and Analysis
Jordan Hocker’s candidacy reflects a broader trend of younger, socially conscious candidates stepping into local politics to address entrenched problems with fresh perspectives. Her focus on sustainability, equity, and community engagement offers a counterpoint to traditional political approaches often dominated by incumbents or development interests.
The water issue, a critical concern for Maui, reveals how infrastructure and environmental challenges intersect with social equity. Hocker’s advocacy for technologies like atmospheric water generation highlights the need for innovative solutions that can reduce dependency on vulnerable systems, especially in the face of climate change and drought.
Affordable housing remains a persistent issue not just in Maui but across many communities facing rapid economic shifts. Hocker’s push for permanent affordability addresses the common problem of housing stock flipping to market rates, which undermines long-term community stability. Her insistence on aligning housing development with infrastructure capabilities underscores the complexity of sustainable development.
On homelessness, Hocker’s perspective challenges common stereotypes by emphasizing that many homeless individuals are working people caught in systemic failures. Her call for managed encampments and safe hubs reflects a pragmatic approach adopted by some progressive cities, recognizing that traditional shelter models are insufficient and that housing is a spectrum of needs.
Her critique of governmental inertia and “old culture” in Maui politics points to a larger challenge in local governance: balancing established interests with the urgent need for transformation. Hocker’s insight that council members can only recommend while department heads enforce policies suggests structural barriers that must be addressed through leadership and collaboration.
Finally, the emphasis on community values and mutual aid highlights how cultural context matters in policy-making. Maui’s unique blend of island culture, environmental vulnerability, and economic pressures requires solutions that are not only technical but deeply rooted in social relationships and shared responsibility.
Jordan Hocker’s interview provides a comprehensive look at the interconnected challenges facing Maui County and offers a hopeful vision for leadership grounded in sustainability, equity, and community empowerment. Her campaign underscores the need for voters to engage actively in shaping a future that supports all residents, especially the working class and vulnerable populations.
Transcript
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[Music] aloha out there in television radio and internet land i’m jason schwartz your host of the neutral zone my neutral zone.com campaign 2022 special edition we have candidates i’m a candidate you know for county council cal louis but all of maui’s three islands vote for all the candidates i have another candidate a young and exciting 171 so everyone’s young but an experienced young person who’s uh jordan Hocker thank you and welcome to the show and welcome to the political
00:56
arena aloha thank you so much jason it’s really good to be here and to be welcomed into the arena it certainly is an arena there’s so much going on right now with our maui county elections i know that our audience some know you but if you can help by kind of giving a quick synopsis if you can of you and then what made you decide this time it was time to run i’ll let you take it from there yeah so my name is jordan Hocker i live i live up country in an area that’s just before keaukea
01:33
known as waiahuli um i am a community advocate my background really is in homeless advocacy as well as trying to tackle our maternal mortality rates and overall try to find as much health for mothers and families through the birthing process i’m also a sustainable science management major at uh maui college um i had been going to school for a while for for human services and then the pandemic hit and i looked around and saw maybe the holes that had opened up um the sinkholes so to speak and and really realized that if we
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didn’t get our our basic fundamental needs really like food and water um and shelter together that you could you could be the best mental health professional um out there but you’d be bailing water out of a sinking ship so um you know my educational background and focus is is in sustainable science management and um you know i stepped forward to run because i noticed last election there was no challenger for the seat um just the incumbent and i remember voting last time and said you know people people deserve a choice
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and deserve someone to vote for and then when the pandemic hit and my tourism job sort of dried up due to the shutdown and um and whatnot and the county council became available via blue jeans and all the committee meetings um that i could attend from home i said well why don’t i focus on on what our government’s what our local government’s doing to help us right now you know like let me let me get a clear picture of this uh because i’m a researcher at heart so um that really started my
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i would say intensive journey into really getting a clearer picture as to how maui county council functioned and and what was going on in local government and how that directly affected our livelihood so i’m i’m a working class person you know we got knocked down several pegs by the pandemic my family and and i want to see other other working-class people thriving instead of us just trying to to survive and i know that you know we have a lot of different interests here in maui county and i want to make sure that
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the interests of the people are balanced with those those outside entities so it’s a little bit about me and why i’m i’m stepping forward so i appreciate that i hear the sound sort of an echo i don’t know how you’re you must be cooler you have questionable internet is that possible um i don’t i heard like when i speak you’ll hear it it’s like an echo sometimes but if our listeners are fine we’ll be fine can you hear okay with me i can there’s no echo on my end
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okay okay well um i hear you when when i think of uh up country cooler that’s a funny seat charmaine tavares i think was up there had it before and then it was yuki and charmaine went on to be mayor and right and yuki’s really been on the council a while pretty strong candidate anything specific i mean you’re running in general but anything specific that uh as you’re going a viewer might say ah there’s a difference that i can note that i might tweak things left or right you know i
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think that’s right is now how we choose hopefully we choose by issues some and also demeanor yuki’s very congenial to me i always have excellent conversations but others have had all different experiences over the time and publicly we see different pieces um and you know i’m just always wondering um have you seen people up there in your area do you know many people in your area that are politically involved are you involved with the cooler community association at all in that group yeah so my introduction to the kula
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community association was actually through um sort of a neighbor volunteer effort up country um when a lot of the you know when the shutdown happened there was a large amount of dumping happening on pallehu road the dump road and um you know i had i drive up it frequently because it’s a bit nicer of a climb on my car than the highway is um but you know my my partner tom and i were going wow we really should get out here and clean up some of this trash because it’s pretty it’s pretty bad and
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i saw somebody um i saw my name mark white who is you know now my my friend and uh post on the nextdoor app that he was planning on going out and cleaning it and so we um some of us up country residents got together and started cleaning up the road and you know paying out of pocket for disposal fees for tires and things like that so you know i had actually reached out to uh council member ukilay to see if there was any way that the county could help us pay for it and i know that we did go in front of the kula community
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association to just sort of talk about what we were doing um you know i do i do know folks up here who are politically active most of them are are environmentally minded farmers um you know and and upcountry has a water infrastructure issue you know when the when we get drought conditions you know it’s it’s really our water that’s that’s at stake because we pump it all the way over from olinda and p.e hollow and it’s a far it’s a far way to get water so when those reservoirs are low
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you know the the farming and the cattle ranching looks you know ranching looks more uncertain and then we deal with the access deer coming down the mountain and eating a lot of the the local food that’s trying to be grown up here um so you know the upcountry seat is really interesting because we we do have our infrastructure issues and and no one seems to be really proactively approaching how we’re gonna tackle that um it’s just you know we’ve had the water meter waiting list which
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technically doesn’t exist anymore but um you know i have talked to families who their parents passed away trying to subdivide to their children and um and and or you know you’ve lived up countries since the 70s and get told that okay your your name’s been pulled so that you can condominiumize for your family but it’s going to cost you a million dollars to be able to put in the infrastructure um and then you know meanwhile there are these uh these aglan plots that are coming up that seem to have their water meters
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just already uh there you know so it’s it’s a you know it’s an infrastructure question and it’s also like how do we um how do we protect our country residents who are here and have been here for a long time um i hear it um i’m just curious because i’ve presented this but i’m not sure who how hard they’re listening really you know that we can get water out of the air and that for residential use that we can have in your home something that if put on a 30-year mortgage
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would amortize out to be one of the smartest investments you ever made and wouldn’t put a strain on water system so waiting for a water meter the whole system could change people haven’t explored that kind of funny when i hear about ranch lands that are we know there’s so much gray water you know whatever we want to call it water after single use for whatever the purpose is just gets washed away if we could deal with the things we need clean and have it in a new way there’s so many
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technologies when i think about that i’m bringing it up because at the county audience i want you to know this is me as candidate throwing his little two cents in here the county needs to really understand that there are alternative things that they haven’t been looking at or seeing clearly to put in in motion before the crisis is so bad i mean how bad does water have to be that cooler is still getting water from olinda and olin does we don’t have enough water everywhere you see all these lungs that are brown
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everywhere why haven’t they taken the burden off by exploring alternatives that really exist you may not realize but some of these things i’ve been bringing up for years now with candidates on interviews like we’re having like now where you’d think like that would kind of when i talk about water from air if you get on that seat in council and you sort of think you have a water problem and you never think about what i’m talking about i would find you to be missing something that’s what’s happened
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with me and these candidates over 13 elections so you know that’s well that’s why i asked about yuki i always wonder you know i have nothing at all against her specifically but i’m always looking for what is it that people feel in our county because we all vote for all these council people what is it that’s missing why are we not getting the extra help that people need and what do you think you can do as a council person i mean i know i’m i hear they keep creating new jobs but
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then that people go wait wait our budget is now up but we did create 49 new jobs yeah well yes that does cost money and uh inflation is here a billion isn’t really that high considering that wow let’s see here you know it’s like a very interesting game we’re playing now when people talk about well i think we need to be fiscally conservative excuse me do you want to give up your job or ricky hokama coming back to run after being off and knowing there’s the controversy about how many times people
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run knowing he’s already got plenty of money he’s got plenty of experience to be a consultant but he decided to run you know that’s why i ask these funny questions and create this kind of funny forum i don’t think of it as funny i think of it as a place to talk about things openly you know what would ricky say what why wouldn’t he be a consultant even if he was a paid consultant but why did you feel gabe who’s been working hard on housing you know we talk about issues these casual people have been
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working their tails off i think yeah you know and to their credit we’re making great strides i think we need to make more and i think we need to they they put money in the budget they said for a plan an integrated plan about diversification of our economy they haven’t been listening when i’ve been talking with them for a long long long time i’m saying this group has sort of an old sheen an old shine an old way uh an old culture and get somehow uh feel attacked um do you have any any of that i don’t know
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when i’m talking about this i guess i’m i’m talking more as my history here where good ideas don’t happen because things the way they are don’t like to be moved not only too quickly maybe never at all and when the public force like in wailuku there was meeting there were meetings about the building of that hotel and the infrastructure thing way before jonathan starr and that group tried to do the hotel and then he made a change and you know both were good ideas and the times
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changed the public made themselves known you have that kind of a are you in there with that kind of a thing are these issues that i just brought up so wildly about council having the same people yet again that could be there helping they don’t have to be challenging a seat um or just in general the climate we’re in how can you miss this last moment hurrah for kelly king to jump into a very crowded mayor’s race what do you think that you’re going to be adding as you’re jumping into this
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i’m really giving you a wide range to talk on all these subjects knowing that i am kind of putting myself out here so you can kind of know also who i am and you may have questions of me well jason i think i think you really um you know went around that that very clear issue which is that um one government moves slowly compared to something like the free market right um and people are registered for change you know the amount that’s been accomplished by the current council members um the push has been so
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dedicated and you know you really need like for instance the issue that you’re talking about with pulling water out of the air you know as as someone who is studying sustainable science um and it’s difficult because sustainability is really it’s a buzzword and a lot of people really love to use it um but to to really explore um systems thinking in the realm of policy right um you have to know what your limitations are what system you’re working with um before you can um before you can really be effective and
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so on council you know the thing that i hear said and that i agree with is the position is exactly what you make it it’s going to move as hard as you want to push it you can get in there and coast and not do really much of anything but shoot down other people’s ideas you know um and so when it comes to to things that i envision um that are along the realm that you’re talking about especially with water and being a lot smarter the way that we are um and currently if there wasn’t a a huge
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environmental impact then um you know because my concern is how much water can we pull out of the air before we begin to affect our our climate right um insignificant issue as far as i appreciate that the the the thing that’s so fun about it is there are there’s a guy interviewed in 2005 and i saw a ted talk in like 2014 of him talking about the there are 2 700 natural things that can help in our world he’s from the zero emissions research institute good name that can create power by the weight of
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columns onto crystal to power a building things that on an island we should be exploring things that sound magical that are naturally possible and water from the air is not only possible we’ve had there was a demonstration unit may still be sitting actually in cooler in a locked area that can create a couple of thousand gallons a day imagine you have a system paid for over the years that can make a house self-sustainable with water and power and how we could change the use of open lands because we
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can grow there because we can put our houses in different places the potential is really i mean i’m not talking because i’m the inventor or i’m the one doing it just i’m using as examples there’s so many things so yeah and i that’s why i want to be on council because when you sit off and you’re giving ideas you don’t quite have the tractions when you’re at the table and you can lead a charge and a charge in a good way an inclusive charge yeah and that’s that’s what i think that
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we need in terms of our council members is people willing to leave the charge and right now you know it’s kind of uncertain because we’ve had we’ve had folks who are willing to do that you know um i’ve been i know the work that gabe johnson has done on affordable housing and i know how dedicated him and his office are to doing that um you know and and so i i have a lot of respect for what’s being done on the council currently you know water infrastructure is a huge issue here for upcountry and we are
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we’re so dependent on the systems that we have that it would be foolish not to explore other technologies that could help us um or expand our our reclaimed use um water you know every single drop of water we use here is so incredibly important um you know and i think the the method of thinking is okay when we run out of water in our aquifer we’ll just desalinate the ocean right and it’s like for me it’s that type of thinking is um is unfortunate and i think has no place in in government because it’s just sort
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of pushing off a very pressing issue until we have an emergency and you you know that the er aquifer has been in what do they say a very very short distance from the salt for now decades and it’s been such a big problem so that i’m really the thing i was talking about imagine a tax credit no it’s not the whole answer but it can help with the answer and make people that are feeling isolated and can’t do find a way they can do and that’s what i was sharing yeah yeah and i i want to see that benefit working
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class people you know because it’s often with a lot of these technologies you have people who can afford them right you have people who can afford to implement them and then you have uh people who are just peeking by you know and so i’d like to see a lot more of our resilience um translate to to helping our our working class folks um and there is again i guess locally what an idea of a of a credit a tax credit that or a tax rate demand whatever combination happens the it will help that’s the whole thing it
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can help the people that live here and that’s that’s i guess another focus housing and what are we going to do for the people who live here with the cost of everything any answers there you i guess there’s no magic bullet what do you have in mind for housing in terms of housing you know i like what’s being done um i think that there’s a couple a couple areas of improvement that i can see um when you build affordable housing projects or when a developer comes forward to fast-track
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um a project that has affordable housing for it you know the housing doesn’t remain affordable in perpetuity right so in there they have to be affordable for 10 years and then you can just often sell it as market rate and i know for sure that the industries who make a lot of money off of selling market rate homes here in maui county you know would just hover around waiting for that 10 year mark and then you know show up with these offers people can’t refuse which is what happened um throughout the the pandemic you know
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what i heard feedback from from people who were being kicked out of their rentals because they’re the home that they were living in was going to be sold because it was just too too hot of a market so i’d like to see affordable housing projects in perpetuity um i don’t know if that is the county taking that on you know because there’s the question like well if we don’t make them some market rate homes then the developer won’t make any money right uh and i i keep hearing that you know
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and i’m and for me not all developers i’m not anti-development i’m pro-smart development meaning that you shouldn’t be building affordable housing in flood plains you should be afforded be building affordable housing in areas that have the water and the transportation infrastructure to be able to handle the additional occupancy rate so um for me when i’m looking at affordable housing i’m thinking how can we preserve that affordability regardless of what the market is doing
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because that’s where we’re getting the short end of the stick is that despite our economy taking a huge hit that industry hasn’t taken a hit if anything people within that industry have been making a lot of money off of our misfortune um and that is to a degree how the free market works um but i want when i moved to maui i fell in love with the culture here and i don’t want to see the culture that i fell in with be displaced in that way um the other thing too is if we’re going
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to put in more affordable housing we have to get very smart about our water and transportation infrastructure you know i i love living rurally there are areas of the island that i don’t even go to and i try to avoid altogether because sitting in traffic is not what i want and there are so many people on the south and west side that have no other option right um and and i hear that transportation or the the congestion complaint a lot come up when new projects are proposed um and i don’t really ever see any
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solutions for that i don’t see you know we could we could be on green transportation you know we could really um we could beef up our public transportation system and actually make it accessible for the working class you know if i were to if i didn’t have a car up here i wouldn’t be able to really go to work unless it was somewhere i could walk and that’s not um really realistic for a lot of people so it’s um on an affordable housing i want to see it in perpetuity and i want
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to see some actual implementations of good infrastructure along with it because right now where some of the affordable housing isn’t actually affordable for for local people i think a lot of the subjects we talk about are getting to be where everyone’s all we all know these issues are way out of whack you know right right um you know what i would like to add is that the big issue of over development we we have to try to that’s a thing often talked about stop the growth of the tourism industry in
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a number of things reduce the number of short-term rentals through making it less attractive increase for the local until those houses get built there’s no question that we hear about um excuse my phone ringing panther there’s no question that uh we’re building housing 3 000 planned mayor’s talking about that’s all great but there’s yesterday’s article any night there could be a thousand people that are homeless right now we are incredibly we are not doing the job for the
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homeless we don’t have enough solutions we don’t have enough workers we don’t have enough answers we don’t have enough places i keep asking that question and i have no one that says that’s an emergency the mayor can can take funds i’ve asked the council people but tasha kama others that are really caring about these things and where’s the emergency put up tents put up safe zones put up bathrooms if we can do it for people that are coming from another country why on an
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island can’t we deal with this like another issue until we build 3 000 with another three thousand in the next years whatever what are we gonna do now that’s the million-dollar question so i’m putting it out i don’t expect you to be the genie with the wand but i really would like to hear your direction on because i don’t feel that issue is coming up strongly enough about support for the people that need more support put more workers there but create more solutions anyway yeah that’s an issue that that is
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really personal to me um you’re right there’s a lack of urgency and i feel like pre-pandemic we could say oh well people aren’t working hard enough or lazy or we could make up all of these myths about people but so many of us got knocked down you know i say six pegs you know like where it would take us um years and years and years to catch up from from what we experienced but to answer your question i think it is the current administration’s policy that is preventing us from meeting
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people exactly where they’re at um it’s an issue that i’m i’m really well versed on because i see what we do right now and so currently we have a what’s called by the the department of housing and human concerns a compassionate relocation program and um i’m i’m air quoting that because it’s it’s anything but compassionate um and i had seen i had seen something for instance the i believe it was the city of san jose had started to say like put up parking lots where people
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could get showers where people could get services where people could pitch tents that sort of things like central hubs where people could get what they want or and what they need you know really the baseline stuff because another a big area of myth is that people who are unsheltered here in maui county aren’t working and that’s couldn’t be further from the truth most people who are homeless or living out of their cars have jobs they just can’t get a leg up to be able to then get housing and even
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the nonprofits that we task with things like shelters have had a diminished capacity due to covid and you have to do things like call every single day so say you’re on the streets and you want housing you have to find a phone hope that you have the money to pay for a phone and then you have to call them relentlessly every single day to see if they have any space for you and then you have to go through their you know six-month program and i you know i feel like maybe before these entities that were helping people
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by paying their deposit to get into rent or paying a couple months rent to like really get them set up now our rents are so high that that model is imploding you know we don’t have enough rental inventory that’s accessible to the point where these non-profits can’t even really help people effectively and you mentioned about the homeless that are working the homeless that are not working uh need to be served also i found an incredible the the hospitals are dismissive of of a lot of people and things are
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getting way out of control where i agree that the people that are working but i just i’m trying to broaden the public to understand that this tremendous need somehow this is at a level of emergency right now that’s i think that’s how it i agree with you that’s how it should be dealt with we are at a level of emergency people are you know people are dying on the streets and that’s not an exaggeration no it’s not that’s why when i talk about my platform i say housing for all
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meaning housing for people who can’t afford to work people who are disabled people who are experiencing mental health crisis substance abuse crisis because for me um having gone through housing insecurity as a teenager um having been met with a lot of these challenges um the younger person you know i don’t forget what that was like and i would really uh challenge anyone to try to keep their head space in a good positive uplifted mentally healthy place while not having knowing where your food
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or your water or anything is going to come from so it’s um when i say housing for all i mean for the entire spectrum because it really [Music] i i think that there are a lot of myths that are perpetuated that that kind of um protect people from that that reality uh which is that our you know our unsheltered residents are our neighbors they’re people in our community um whether you agree with where they’re at or whatever the judgment is in your head um everybody deserves that dignity and
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to be treated with that respect um and so you know there was a recent appropriation that was set aside i think two hundred thousand dollars by council member king for a actually a safe parking lot like a hub because right now you know if it’s on if our homeless folks have ended up on private property or county property they’re served with uh essentially eviction notices um by by the police and the private land owner or by the county and the police and i’ve had people say to me about that
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idea not in my backyard that is the big problem the nimby problem yeah the nimby problem is is huge and and you know i think at a certain point tough you know no it’s not in your backyard but um how you know it it’s hard for me to wrap my head around i have a lot of compassion and empathy having come from um a more unstable background than i have now and you know had certain rental assistance not been in place like i don’t know that my housing would have been secure this entire time you know
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i can tell you again i hope you don’t mind i call you young there are people my age that are not able to afford housing they try to get on a list for housing and they’re told there’s a five and eight year waiting list that’s not housing that’s a list of never never land try it when you’re 70 and 75. try it when you can’t walk and you have challenges when you have things the level of challenge now is great and the when i say emergency i could scream it because the people around me that i see
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hurting that rely on me and i don’t have much to offer but i am the one reaching out i talk to our audience often and tell them hey if you see someone hurting help them there’s not enough help you can be that good samaritan you know no matter what religion you’re in you know what right and wrong is and so much need but i don’t know how we’re gonna get do you think the new mayor one of the myriad of people or the same mayor but you think we’re going to get to that level of awareness and action
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or is this going to get worse it depends on whether or not they’re going to listen i mean the current mayor’s administration i’ve been exceptionally disappointed with the way that they’ve been handling are our unsheltered residents and um and i’ve seen it firsthand you know um exceptionally disappointed we need uh i’d say it’s as simple as an administration shift but we really need someone who isn’t looking down their nose at anybody for where they’re at but instead saying
36:10
you know as a mayor i am responsible to everyone here in maui county um and i want to step forward and do the right thing because it really isn’t being the right thing um at the end of the day and because select the heads of things like housing and human concerns the people who are at the head of those departments have a large amount to do with how that policy is implemented don’t you have to have a solution before you i mean if if you have a bunch of people living somewhere and you’re
36:43
going to rouse them shouldn’t you have a place to put them or them yeah um i laugh because that that question is um is one i ask myself and other other folks who are working to advocate for our unsheltered residents are asking all the time if there are not enough shelter beds if there is not enough housing you should not be evicting people from the place that they’ve settled here period and i can say from firsthand from my experience we do not have those services come right alongside when an eviction is
37:23
happening that’s not that’s not what’s currently happening um it and and so yeah i’m i’m with you 100 on that when i say housing for all you know um i i want to look into things like managed encampments i’ve been you know there’s a few people that are i call my champions like lisa darcy who’s out there working with people and share your money i check in myself with people i know that are homeless that an encampment that is safe that has facility you talk about city of san jose
37:57
i talk about nimby not in my yard imagine with the transportation if we had more than one hub but we could do this so that and give these people that are in these programs a potential work path a potential hope path a potential something other than dirt and watching things around them go on as usual without them having any hope i i don’t know is that a leadership role from a mayor can they instill that in directors can they to let in their workers when they don’t have enough arms and legs
38:36
how do we figure this out how do we create more work and more jobs with no money yeah we work with the people that own this but we have the richest people in the world here why not you know they you here ever heard the word about grabbing the low-hanging fruit people like grab the thing that’s easiest or in investment the one that makes the most profit there’s some that would help that are low hanging that maybe don’t make profit as much but they really help we need to find a way to shift things so
39:12
that on an island people shift to the things that will help with our environment’s needs the housing thing or you know you talk about the people who want to make money we can shift this it’s all a matter of who’s looking at this in a new way outside of this box that seems to be the box because we have a lot of people that are i mean we talk about a thousand homeless i think that number is low personally from what i’ve seen but i know that that next category of i’m paying 2 800 for this one bedroom
39:49
but how do you have families and do all that with such complete attention on having to pay a rent and i i don’t know what people are doing there’s a program to help home buyers how do young people really realize hey if you don’t buy a house when you’re young someday you’re going to be the victim of someone else saying adios muchacho and you’re gone you could have had equity growth all that years there’s all kinds of things that somehow is missed around here people are
40:26
running on empty when i came here and heard there were people working on two and three jobs i knew this place needed some kind of economic remake what is that plantation mentality tourism from outside it’s easy to see from inside it’s like playing checkers the people that are in our government often are playing from not looking at the whole game and that is my number one complaint and why i think i’m qualified here i’ve been looking at this game from a distance keeping my mouth in neutral zone
41:04
but bring not that neutral but a place where i want it all to work we’re an island we’re gonna have to hug each other and everyone including the homeless including the everyone i believe that a shift in mental attitude of the public is going to be the only key that’s going to open the door to these problems because they’re so overwhelming and when you’re running for office every two years and everyone’s oh well we’re doing the best we can oh yes well what do you we shouldn’t rely on the government the
41:35
public i sound republican as agreeing but shouldn’t we rely on the people and that low-hanging fruit someone has money to realize if they got involved in this it wouldn’t make a lot of money but look it could make money help the community look they get a some kind of tax credit or some benefit that’s going to help us if we did that and got all the little farms working all the little people working you buying from local doing this helping build this how many i mean i know i’m all over the
42:09
map but it’s integrated because we talk about housing we drive through cal louis you see these little old cinderblock houses and you go i got three blocks over these people have money these are the people that don’t have money that can’t build out their houses what if they could build two or three or multi-rentals on their property get a special loan program and now have rentals on their property help improve inner city redevelopment so many things can happen that aren’t being aggressively explored
42:47
and so when i’m like i always say well i mentioned it from off camera here to these people all these years now is the time to be on council so when i’m on council jordan and you’re on council and i’m looking to do things that are wild i’m going to be asking the private sector to step up because the government doesn’t need to fund these programs there’s profit in them there’s money in them the private sector could do it if they’re led in that direction of economic development whether it’s at
43:22
a council level or a department level where we are and looks at us you talk about your self-sustainability classes at maui college it’s more than self-sustainability now the catchphrase i remember because i’ve been doing it 30 years talking about this so it’s i’m a weird duck in that i’ve been talking about this so long and had solutions here so long and people haven’t been listening so i want to see it at the table but i want people like you i want someone who is for the people understands we have a
43:55
need and we can encourage the mayor to declare an emergency and move things forward because talking from the outside is not a powerful position and i feel that’s that’s such a huge thing um have you had good response when you’ve tried to get things done for your behalf or the things you’ve been trying to do you know it really depends on who you’re talking to um at the end of the day i think um and how willing they are to move the needle um that’s that’s really what it comes down to
44:34
that’s why i’m stepping forward is because if i did about 10 years in hospitality business and one of the things i really liked that i took away from that is that you get to meet people where they’re at and technically if you’re good at your job you’re going to hear because people are always talking you’re going to hear where they’re at and how what you have to offer for them right and so um i agree with you about the fact that we need the community to step up just as
45:07
much as the government because the government has its limitations um but it is the the county structure is a hard thing to work with and find out who you need to talk to the learning curve is very very steep if you’re trying to get anything done and i found more success in problem solving our community issues with partnering with other community organizations often than approaching my council member directly and saying hey we have this huge issue what can be done on a county level and what i hear a lot of is well that
45:44
can’t be done because of this we can’t do this because of that and so on and so forth and it’s that status quo that you can keep it if you want to but we are in a state of emergency really and and i think that that is not a sensationalizing of our situation here in maui county we we are you know and and it’s not because people aren’t working hard enough you know i would love to see the community rally i would love to see more civil engagement um but i also recognize that when you’re
46:18
you’ve got a family to support sometimes you’ve got to put your head down and you just got to do what you can do on that day and then wake up the next day and try to start it again and when you’re faced with a lot of uncertainty what are you gonna do you know it’s it’s hard to to think outside of that bubble when your own family is struggling so you know i’ve i’ve seen a a hesitancy to change and a hesitancy to really talk about the truth in certain positions and then
46:50
i have other you know council members that i’ve approached and they’re like we’re working on it and then i see that they actually are working on it there’s a follow through there um do you have you had council members tell you know we can only recommend we have no control of these department heads and we would we have been given a no you can’t from uh the other side so um it’s a subtle and interesting world we live in isn’t it well that’s what you know what i’m
47:22
hoping i see i see that in you as i’m talking i hear myself as i sound like a burst of energy where you’re very very composed and you like you said it’s a matter of finding someone where they are and working with them from the way they are so that experience from the hospitality industry will serve you well on council and working with the product i love meeting people where they’re at you know that’s that’s my whole that’s my policy on unsheltered is unsheltered residents here in mount county meet
47:55
people where they’re at ask them what they need and then provide it you know it’s not it’s not that difficult of a concept and you know we are public servants the mayor has a huge job he’s still a public servant that’s that’s the whole nature of of the american democracy system is that it’s not about your ego it’s not about all the things you think you can get done you’re serving the public and so if you’re not available to listen then i would really ask what your motivations
48:30
are um at the end if you would ask mike i’m sure he would say i am doing this to serve all the people i am making my choices based on the best for everyone i can’t just speak so it’ll be an interesting discussion with him you’ve been a great guest and we have a little time left but i’m dedicating that to giving you the floor where i shut my mouth and i really give you a chance to really focus on the things you would like the voters to know about you and about what you’d like to be doing
49:04
okay yeah i can i can do that um it really comes down to i don’t have all the answers i have motivations and i have things from my lived experience and what i hear from other people that seem to be top priorities here in maui county um housing for all whether you can afford housing or not is a huge issue and i don’t think any candidate right now is unaware of that being a problem what i hope to bring to the table is decision making and an area of expertise and analysis that means we’re
49:44
not going to be scrambling 50 years later to undo the impacts of the decisions we make now that we’re making decisions that are literally fortifying maui county so that you know i have i have a young daughter she’s six and um and i want for as much as we value keiki and kupuna we have to be making decisions that are actually giving them hope for the future and legitimately taking care of our of our older populations you know because that the wisdom there and and the the lived experience isn’t lost on me
50:23
so it’s um from my perspective i want to work for the people that’s why i’m stepping forward and that might look different based on whomever i’m speaking to but really there are so many of us who are hard-working who are showing up for our families who are showing up for our communities and we’re just keeping that nose barely above water and that’s who i want to work for you know the first time i ever got in a pool it was four foot and i think i was like just right there and i remember that
51:00
feeling of just trying not to suck that water straight up my nose um and i feel like that is it’s like a metaphor for what we’re dealing with right now um the last two years have been an acceleration of what we’ve known have been issues here in maui county it happened so fast it was like the blink of an eye while we didn’t have money to invest in our community outside did and they took that opportunity um and that’s not who i’m stepping forward for i’m stepping for those forward for for you really are
51:37
our culture here which is based around community and taking care of each other because that’s what it is that’s the heart of maui county is that like we’re here for each other you know you if you have too much if you’re growing you know as someone who has a backyard garden and someone who you know grows the food that i can in the time that i have if you have too much you just sit there it’s gonna waste so you give it to people you know you give it to your neighbors um and we become
52:07
stronger in that and that’s really that’s the foundation i believe in is how we can make our community network stronger but right now we’re being hit on all sides by these huge tidal waves of of the housing market of climate change of you know our children’s future really looking there’s so many things and really you know i want my daughter and the other keiki who are out there growing up to see the example of adults working their butts off for them so so that there’s some hope for the
52:45
future because the other thing too is as those families leave the families that are here if they’re struggling their kids are going to leave they’re going to go other places for opportunities and so it’s like right now we want to keep our scholars here we want to keep people who care about maui county here we have to be thinking about them you wouldn’t be surprised to know that we’ve been hearing i’ve been hearing we’ve been talking about it for 30 years here i’m not surprised
53:16
it’s that’s the hardest thing that is the people that are saying we can’t do anything if you feel what jordan is saying is important to you you can register and vote you can get involved to be able to choose leaders who will make it important on their priority list and that’s really very important jordan you you really exemplify what we’re talking about someone in our community who’s stepping up to help improve our community and just participation as you’ll see in these
53:56
forums you know you have a race with three people in the primary i have seven which is like i went crazy halloween is a wild as a wild seat right now there’s a lot of people stepping forward for that i asked tasha what do you think about this and she said well it’s good it shows there are people that have ideas that want to step up because they want to do things for the community she’s keeping her good attitude she’s a very nice lady and i know that all of her decisions don’t meet with my sniff test
54:30
and you know but i’m not i’m not one to pick on things but boy that race is just crowded with bodies and uh if you don’t see who everyone is it would be a shame because some of these groups are making their choices without seeing all the candidates we all have ideas powerful ideas that need to be heard by everyone before decisions are made but you know look how long you know i talk about me doing this for 30 years you know i don’t mean to say you’re probably in your 30s right
55:07
yes yes i am see i’m old people i’ve watched people like jordan i’ve watched people like me going long time she grew up knowing the right thing and the world was already a generation behind we oldsters come out from wherever you are and vote and be strong with us in being able to help make the changes for your children and grandchildren and the world you know you’re in the hospitality industry you know that we can strengthen the hospitality industry you don’t have to kill it just because we don’t want to
55:52
grow the number of places there’s so many things that are yet to be explored jordan you’ve been really a great guest here anything that you know that you want to make sure you say i don’t want to be so you know vociferous here that i cut you off any things that you really know that you want to be sure that people know before we wrap it up i just i believe in the strength of our community i really do and i believe in the the work ethic and the perseverance of my neighbors you know whether we live
56:28
right next door to each other or not it’s like kihei is really only six miles away from where i live but it takes me about an hour to get there right but um it really is we’re all in this together at the end of the day um and we might not agree on exactly the way that things should be taken care of but um to touch on what you said you know we are all absolutely trying our best and um i just want to say you know i i want to work for you i want i want to to protect your interests the interests
56:58
of your children and the interests of our future because it looks it looks pretty uncertain and um i i want to problem solve that that uncertainty so well jordan Hocker you are very welcome to guest here and if there’s anything ever in the future you want to say and be on my show self-declared show now right for a long time you’re a welcome guest jordan Hocker the upcountry seat of the county council but remember all you maui’s no matter where you are on all three islands you vote for all the seats so if you like
57:34
jordan and you live on molokai illinois you can vote for her and if you see schwartz anywhere on the ballot that’s me you can vote for him too jordan thank you for being here with uh me and the audience uh it’s been a pleasure yeah thank you so much thank you all you out there in uh listening land we hope you’ll join us again go to maui neutral zone you can see this again go up to youtube and google jordan you’ve been great you guys out there you’ve been great we hope we’ll see you
58:06
again blessings at aloha thank you take care [Music] you
