The Honolulu City Council voted to expand the ban on sitting and lying down on sidewalks in parts of Honolulu to pedestrian malls.

The council approved the bill by a 7-2 vote on Wednesday.

Honolulu originally banned sitting and lying down in Waikiki nearly a year ago after tourists complained about homeless people living near the beach. At the time, there were plans to create a safe zone for camping in an industrial part of Honolulu, but that plan stalled. Now city and state officials are looking for additional sites to provide shelter.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness says Hawaii has the second-highest number of homeless people per capita in the nation. The issue gained attention after state Rep. Tom Brower was recently attacked at a homeless encampment.

Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, who supports the bans, said that because there was no designated place for displaced homeless people to go after leaving Waikiki, they just moved across the canal into her district. She said the bans aren’t solving the problem, but she continues to support them.

"People are just moving wherever they can, and it’s disrupting neighborhoods and local small businesses," Kobayashi said in an interview. "We have to keep doing it piecemeal, because people kept moving to other areas."

Critics say the bans are criminalizing homelessness and not solving the problem.

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell introduced the first sit-lie bill which applied to the tourist mecca Waikiki, and then supported a later expansion to various business districts across Oahu. But Caldwell is unlikely to approve the expansion to pedestrian malls because of legal concerns, said his spokesman, Jesse Broder Van Dyke, in an email. Caldwell says the bans should be limited to commercial districts during business hours.

Caldwell had vetoed a previous expansion of the sit-lie ban in May, but the council overrode his veto.