Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Commerce, Consumer Protection, and Housing and Human Services, to which was referred S.B. No. 1717 entitled:

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to require full reimbursement of costs to agencies that provide shelter to the homeless under the Housing and Community Development Corporation of Hawaii's homeless shelter stipend program.

The Hawaii Youth Services Network and an individual testified in support of this measure. The Housing and Community Development Corporation of Hawaii opposed the measure.

Your Committees find that stipend payments made by the State to provider agencies under a contract to provide emergency and transitional shelter to homeless families and individuals do not fully reimburse the agencies' costs. This measure would require full reimbursement.

Your Committees further find that current funding levels for the State's homeless shelter stipend program do not support full reimbursement to providers and that this requirement would force the State to terminate some of its shelter contracts.

Your Committees have amended this measure by replacing its contents with language that appropriates funds for homeless shelter stipend payments.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Commerce, Consumer Protection, and Housing and Human Services that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1717, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1717, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.