Fellows mentioned in this story: Suzanne Skjold

From Hawai‘i Public Radio:

Aloha United Way received over 29,000 calls to its 211 resource hotline in 2024.

Close to a third of all callers last year were seeking some form of housing assistance. Within that category, help with rent payments was the top request.

211 tracks the types of requests that come into its hotline. It also classifies whether or not a caller's need has been "met," meaning that 211 was able to connect the caller with a given resource.

Suzanne Skjold, the chief operating officer at Aloha United Way, said that there was a significant amount of unmet need for rental assistance in 2024, in part because many programs that offer rental assistance are out of funds. According to Skjold, Maui had the highest unmet need overall in 2024.

"The data that we see in 211 is capturing what we are intuitively seeing across the state," she said, pointing to the high cost of living and the acute needs of the Maui community since the August 2023 wildfires.

Continue reading at hawaiipublicradio.org.