Homeless shamble back after city cleans up site

CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM
A 51-year-old homeless woman who did not wish to be identified said she took no offense to the Honolulu Police Department for cleaning up the homeless encampment along the Ala Wai Canal on Wednesday afternoon. “They have a job to do,” she said. She said she has been living on the streets for nine years.

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Homeless people were moving back to their home turf across the street from the Hawai‘i Convention Center, less than an hour after a city sweep of stored belongings reduced their Hooverville-style shantytown to about four people.

John Lane, a 53-year-old homeless man who moved to Hawaii from Alaska about a year ago, ate a melted energy bar and contemplated how much effort to put into moving his pile of belongings on Wednesday.

"I don’t have to move it all the time," Lane said. "When they come, I have to move it. But most of the time, they don’t come."

Earlier in the week, more than a dozen homeless encampments stood at the gateway to Waikiki, the state’s top generator of tourism revenue.

"Because they don’t make me break it down, I keep it up," Lane’s neighbor Erick Jepson told the Star-Advertiser last week. "Every third week, Wednesday, they tag it."

Following the city’s latest sweep, Jepson and his three-room makeshift encampment were gone.

"Don’t worry, they’ll all be back," said a 51-year-old homeless woman, who was biding her time near the convention center promenade until she could return to her favorite spot near the Kapiolani Boulevard bridge. "I plan to return home tonight."

City Councilman Stanley Chang said city cleanups are not effective and that despite their regularity, homelessness has become a top complaint among tourists and residents.

Chang is proposing that the city spend $77 million on homeless solutions, including a tent city for homeless people who will not use shelters or housing programs.

"This is the fifth or sixth cleanup in the last few months," Chang said. "Unless they have a place to go, they’ll go right back or move to another place. This is one of the reasons that I think we need a place of refuge."

Chang said he has begun working toward the $77 million allocation and plans by a Friday budget deadline to propose moving $26 million from the city’s general fund into a homeless fund.

He’s got unlikely support from the 51-year-old homeless woman who has lived near his district for nine years.

"Tent cities are OK," said the woman, who was in the military during Desert Storm. "It’s all the same kind, so we might go there. We should not have homeless in Waikiki. That’s where we make our money."