BIO

Kai Uyehara is a reporter for the Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, Washington covering Kitsap County's largest city and specializing in housing, homelessness and development. 

His launch towards journalism began late in his college career at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. While getting his bearings in journalism school, Uyehara made a connection with a homeless man living in the same city through extraordinary circumstances and developed an appreciation for the stories of people who are constantly overlooked. He found hundreds of pages of a manuscript scribbled in fine point sharpie on paper grocery bags in his college's student union building. Combing through pages filled blueprints of fictional starships, repetitious numbers and symbols, pop culture references and stanzas of a fabricated language, he found a name belonging to a Californian man who had been missing from his family for over a decade. After a week of independent investigation, Uyehara from the man to be living minutes away from him in a shelter and reunited him with his family. The experience invigorated Uyehara's foray into journalism, acquainting him with the world of homelessness with the unique story of just one homeless man of the nation's hundreds of thousands.

Uyehara has since gone on to intern for Cascadia Daily News and contribute to the Salish Current in Bellingham, covering waterfront building, flood recovery, farming and homelessness. Today, he is one year into reporting at the Kitsap Sun where he consistently covers local government, housing issues, growth and development and more.