Hawaiʻi lawmakers can improve the economic health of our communities by re-balancing the state’s upside-down tax code.

In a new report, Hawaiʻi Appleseed researchers demonstrate how chronically low wages have prevented Hawaiʻi’s working families from thriving, and outline the significant cost that poverty exacts from these families, from future generations, and from all of us.

Hawaiʻi Appleseed and Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network are teaming up to ensure families with keiki can purchase enough food this summer.

Fewer than 1 in 11 keiki in free or reduced-price school lunch were reached by summer meals.

Community organizations respond to delayed start of public school year by keeping keiki feeding sites open.

Suppers being served in Kalihi and new sites in ʻAiea and Honolulu.

During this unplanned school closure, three SFSP sponsors—YMCA Honolulu, Parents and Children Together, and Palama Settlement—are opening food sites in low-income areas on Oʻahu for keiki.

The merger of these social justice organizations is meant to forge a stronger connection between data-driven policy and impacted communities.

An Appleseed-commissioned poll highlights the extent to which working families are now struggling to get by in Hawaiʻi.

Now is the time for Hawaiʻi to invest in its residents and businesses by creating a state refundable EITC that puts dollars back into workers’ pockets and into the cash registers of local business.

Recommendations for policymakers on how to address our highest-in-the-nation housing costs and associated socioeconomic problems.