WAI'ANAE — An overflow crowd of more than 400 people last night attended a community meeting with Gov. Linda Lingle, who came to the Leeward Coast to see for herself the region's growing homelessness problem.

"Give us back our beaches!" some people shouted from the back of the Wai'anae District Park multipurpose room.

"We're here tonight to listen to you," Lingle told the audience, adding, "We're going to do things the Hawaiian way tonight, with respect and dignity.

"We've heard a lot about the situation on the Leeward Coast as it relates to the homeless problem as well as the problem of people who want to use the public parks."

The meeting had been scheduled for two hours, but when 9 p.m. rolled around more than two dozen people from the audience still were lined up to say their piece.

Some urged compassion for the homeless campers; others described those living on the beach as unmotivated persons who have chosen that lifestyle. Others, such as Wai'anae boat harbor master William Aila, expressed sadness at seeing the community so polarized by the issue.

In a statement made before the meeting, Lingle said, "Our approach is to help homeless residents become self-sufficient by identifying the challenges they are dealing with and providing supportive services they need in order to eventually find permanent housing."

One social-service provider, the Wai'anae Community Outreach Center, has estimated that the number of homeless people along the Wai'anae Coast has more than tripled since 2002, to about 4,000. Hundreds of campsites dominate the view across beaches from Nanakuli to Kea'au, in effect turning the 16-mile coastline into a tent city.

One of the goals for last night's meeting was to define "the scope and magnitude of the homeless problem in the area," Lingle said, and to work with the community to find solutions.

"I want you to know there will be results from tonight's meeting," Lingle told the crowd.

Wai'anae Coast residents such as Denise Saylors said homelessness has become a huge problem.

"It's a very ugly issue," said Saylors, a filmmaker who helped organize a grassroots group, Citizens of The Wai'anae Coast Who Vote.

Saylors' group scheduled its own meeting on homelessness weeks ago for the same date and time as Lingle's appearance last night. Both sides agreed to combine their events.

Last night's meeting was held at the same place where in 2003 angry community members shouted down a grassroots proposal to create a drug-free, supervised homeless campground near the Wai'anae Boat Harbor.

Opponents then said the proposed "Camp Hope" would transform Wai'anae into the homeless dumping ground of the state.

But Lingle last night pointed to the lessons learned since the state in May opened the Next Step Project transitional shelter for homeless people in Kaka'ako. She said a similar approach could be used to help Leeward O'ahu's homeless population.

Some in the community seemed to have softened their opposition to such an approach. Resident Samuel Pai, who expressed the frustration of no longer having access to public beaches because of the homeless campers, received loud applause when he said, "Maybe that's one solution: take all these people and put them in some designated place."

If there was any consensus of opinion, it was that doing nothing has not worked.

"It hurts the homeless and it hurts those who are not homeless," Saylors said. With homelessness comes a host of problems the community is increasingly forced to deal with — drugs, crime, personal safety and coastal degradation, she said.

"We have families that are living in domestic violence," said Saylors, whose recently released first film about Wai'anae's homeless dilemma is titled, "This Is Paradise?"

"We have children who don't get to go to school, and if they do they are not going in clean. We have girls who are being exploited.

"And that's why I wanted to get the community talking. We have people whose families have been here for generations who want to come and say, 'My goodness gracious. Surely we can do better than this.' "

Victor Rapoza, who owns the Waianae Ice House restaurant next to the boat harbor, said elected officials let the community down by waiting so long to address the crisis.

"This problem started 10 years ago," he said. "Where were all these elected officials 10 years ago?

"The politicians are pitting the citizens of Wai'anae against the homeless. This isn't two categories. We're all human beings. It's the elected officials who are sitting on their butts," Rapoza said, drawing cheers.

Among the homeless people who spoke at the meeting was Annie Pau. She said she and her husband, John, have been homeless for the past six years, living from one end of the Wai'anae Coast to the other. Pau and other homeless people said they are painted with a broad brush.

"Anything bad that happens, we get blamed," Pau said.

She said most of the people living on the beach are average people who don't do drugs or have mental problems — just people who have been squeezed out of the housing market because of high prices and bad luck. She said many homeless people hold down two or three jobs.

While Pau was encouraged that the governor was coming to Wai'anae to discuss the issue, she was also wary.

"Back in 2003, I was told they were going to have housing and that by 2007 we'd be moving in, and that the rent would be figured according to what their income is," Pau said. "It's 2006, and there's no housing in the area."

Pau said the same thing happened when she was living in a homeless shanty town encampment near the entrance of Wai'anae Boat Harbor in 2004.

"Broken promises, broken promises, broken promises. We get a lot of broken promises."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.