New facilities are in the works to improve public safety and better address homelessness.

A North Shore first responders hub, a Windward ocean safety facility and a Waipahu base for the city’s homelessness response team are part of a raft of public safety investments that Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi is planning for the coming year.

“The eyes of our communities are solidly upon us. Our local residents need housing, our most vulnerable need help, our sick need medical care and our people need protecting,” he said Tuesday evening in the first State of the City speech of his second term.

North Shore lifeguards are currently based out of a dingy, two-story beach house down the road from Pūpūkea, in the middle of a more than 17-mile stretch of the island that has no ambulance stations.

For the past year and a half, a group of residents has advocated for a larger first responders hub that could include space for an ambulance across the road from Sharks Cove, seeing it as an alternative to a development planned for the area . The mayor announced Tuesday that he was negotiating with the landowner to buy the property.

The mayor also said Tuesday that his office has formed a task force to look into the possibility of merging the Honolulu Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services into a single agency. Last month the City Council postponed a vote on whether to reappoint EMS director Jim Ireland amid complaints that he had fostered a toxic work environment.

To help get homeless people off the streets, the mayor opened a new shelter last month within Iwilei Center focusing on brain and behavioral health.

“Mental health challenges and traumatic brain injuries can make it impossible to transition back into stable living situations,” Blangiardi said in his speech. Kumu Ola Hou is a 24-bed shelter, and three more shelters will open in the facility this year to total almost 100 beds, spokesperson Ian Scheuring said.

That’s in addition to the two respite centers the city opened last year — ʻAʻala Respite Center and Lēʻahi Behavioral and Medical Respite facility at Lēʻahi Hospital — which added a combined 52 beds to the city’s available shelter space.

Still, homelessness remains a visible and pervasive issue around Oʻahu. Last year, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a mainland city that had enforced anti-camping laws despite not having enough shelter space for homeless people, Blangiardi vowed to more aggressively remove homeless people from the streets here.

In addition to being a hub for homeless shelters, Iwilei will be a crucial neighborhood as the city focuses on development around transit hubs, the mayor has said. The city spent about $50 million buying property in Iwilei in the beginning of 2024 with the goal of transforming the industrial area into a mixed-use neighborhood.

The mayor also announced that the island’s high-speed rail line is scheduled to open its second segment on Oct. 1, connecting riders to the airport. A third segment, which will bring riders downtown before ending near Honolulu Hale, is scheduled to open in 2031.

Skyline is still besieged by complaints that the system – which is billions of dollars over budget and more than a decade behind schedule – doesn’t live up to its potential. Short operating hours, inadequate marketing and poorly maintained physical infrastructure surrounding the stations prevent the rail system from being used by more people, a city audit found earlier this month .

“It’s time to bring Skyline to the airport so residents flying out for the weekend don’t need to sit in traffic waiting to get dropped off for their flights,” Blangiardi said.

With ongoing turmoil over funding at the federal level, the city is keeping an eye on the approximately $300 million it gets each year from Washington. The mayor said earlier this month he’s not worried about significant cuts to that funding , and he’s confident the city can fill any gaps that might arise.

In addition to about $20 million of contingency funds, the mayor mentioned the city’s almost $200 million Fiscal Stability Fund that could potentially be tapped in “an extreme, worst-case situation.” The law currently limits when that money can be tapped, and the mayor’s team wants to amend the law so the city can use the fund to make up for lost federal revenue, city managing director Mike Formby said.

The city’s proposed amendment would be temporary and would also allow the mayor to direct money to nonprofits focused on issues like homelessness.

Formby said the mayor’s office is concerned that if the Trump administration makes major cuts that impact nonprofits caring for homeless and vulnerable people, the city won’t “have the capacity to take care of them if we don’t tap into that fund.”