Honolulu City Council members continue to grapple with Oahu’s homelessness problem, advancing a resolution to create “safe zones” but deferring a bill that would have expanded the city’s so-called sit-lie ban across the entire island.
Council Chairman Ron Menor called Bill Opens in a new tab87 Opens in a new tab, the proposal to expand sit-lie, “overly broad” and at “significant risk” of being struck down in court, before he and the six other members at Thursday’s Executive Matters and Legal Affairs meeting deferred the measure.
The city’s corporation counsel expressed its own concerns about the bill, Menor added, after those Council members emerged from an executive session.
The Council committee did advance a separate measure, Bill Opens in a new tab83 Opens in a new tab, that would outlaw sitting or lying on a city sidewalk within 800 feet of a school or public library. That measure now goes to the full Council for its second of three required readings for approval.
The committee further advanced resolution 17-277 Opens in a new tab, to create secure places for homeless to stay — where they could stay temporarily without fear of eviction and have access to restrooms and social services. However, wary of tent cities springing up, Menor and the other members amended the resolution to strike the mention of tents and to instead encourage “tiny houses” — low-cost, easy-to-build shelter spaces.
Menor cited the Low Income Housing Institute’s Tiny House Village program in Seattle as a “successful model” to emulate. Marc Alexander, executive director of the city’s Office of Housing, said that Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration joins the U.S. Interagency Council on Homeless and the National Alliance to End Homelessness in opposing safe zones because they don’t work.
He cited a Portland, Ore.-based transitional housing encampment called Dignity Village, saying “it’s costly and doesn’t move people into permanent housing.” The mayor, Alexander said, would rather expand programs such as the city’s Hale Mauliola transitional housing complex on Sand Island and its Housing First initiative.
Still, Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga expressed frustration that progress isn’t coming fast enough. “What we’re doing right now is just not working. It’s not adequate, and it’s not satisfactory,” she told Alexander.
Some testifiers, such as social worker Akua Campanella and Will Caron of Young Progressives Demanding Action, argued against the sit-lie ban Thursday, saying it does not address the root causes of homelessness on Oahu.
