The Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District Association is implementing a three-hour closure period from 2 to 5 a.m. daily for the Royal Hawaiian Beach to address a range of problems associated with overnight campers.
The new closure, supported by an amendment to the Waikiki Beach Management Plan, will start March 1 on the iconic stretch of sand that extends from the Royal Hawaiian groin to the start of Kuhio Beach Park beyond the Moana Surfrider.
Rick Egged, president of the association, said its board of directors approved the closure due to public safety concerns and to ensure “that Waikiki continues to be the magical place we know and love.”
On Friday, about a dozen campsites were sprawled across the swath of sand, which is privately owned land with public access. Some were built into the fence lines at some of Waikiki’s best beachfront hotels, where visitors pay a premium for ocean views.
Some campers were in the middle of the sand. Others were dangerously close to the tide or the Royal Hawaiian groin.
The stormy weather encouraged most campers to bundle up but one man was digging through a hotel trash can and another had created a pile of recyclables in the middle of the beach.
Egged said permanent signage will be erected to inform the public that the beach section will now have closure hours that are consistent with the city’s nightly beach closure of adjacent Kuhio Beach Park and at Fort DeRussy Beach.
Enforcement of the new hours will fall to the Honolulu Police Department and/or the state Department of Land and Natural Resource’s Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement.
According to Egged, the public will still be able to transit the closed area to go to the ocean or walk through the beach; however, during beach closure hours people will not be allowed to loiter, stand, sit, lie down or store personal items.
Waikiki stakeholders, including hotel management and beach concession operators, have said the absence of closure hours on Royal Hawaiian Beach drew overnight sleepers and created unsafe, unsanitary and sometimes dangerous situations.
“There are trash issues when we come in the morning around 6 a.m. or 7 a.m.,” said Dave Willard, interim executive director of the Waikiki Business Improvement District. “The trash is usually pulled out of the cans and scattered around and it just creates extra work. And it’s kind of a nuisance for a place that is supposed to be a beautiful tourist destination.”
He said staff also have to clean up human feces and occasionally other biohazards such as used syringes.
Hotel security officials have reported conflicts associated with occupation of the beach space for extended periods of time, as well as interactions, sometimes violent, with mentally unstable individuals.
“I think setting beach closure hours will be helpful,” Willard said. “The crowd that’s out there is pretty entrenched in homelessness or life on the street, so to speak, or life on the beach — you don’t have to follow rules and you can just kind of do what you want to do, which includes drugs or alcohol, unfortunately. It would be one less place that they could hang out.”
Willard said Waikiki stakeholders often run into resistance when trying to help connect people with housing and services.
“We are trying to come up with some ways to encourage, cajole or motivate people that are stuck and don’t want help to get some help,” he said.
THE NEW closure plan came out of three meetings convened by the Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District Association last year, which included representatives from DLNR, the Waikiki Business Improvement District, HPD, the Waikiki Neighborhood Board, Sheraton Waikiki, The Royal Hawaiian, Moana Surfrider, Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort, Waikiki Beach Services, Aloha Beach Services, the Aqualani beach recreation management company and the city Department of Parks and Recreation.
The solution is similar to what happened in 2014 when the city advisory Board of Parks and Recreation established closure hours of 2 to 5 a.m. at Fort DeRussy Beach to allow the city to enforce its laws on the state-governed beach, where homeless campers had taken advantage of a jurisdictional loophole to avoid being cited for violating city regulations.
At that time, DLNR transferred control of Fort DeRussy Beach to the city. But new pain points are always emerging.
Last year, East Honolulu, which includes Waikiki, experienced the highest percentage increase of unsheltered homeless of any district on Oahu. That led to increased efforts by state, city, tourism and business officials and nonprofits to leverage resources to get more people off the streets while reducing harms such as increased crime and unsightliness that are associated with rises in unsheltered homelessness.
The 2022 Point-in-Time count, an annual one-night snapshot of the number of people experiencing homelessness who are on the street or in shelters, showed that Oahu’s overall unsheltered population number had plateaued over the last four years with a small decrease since 2019.
But East Honolulu’s share of unsheltered homelessness in 2022 grew to 24%, or 575 of the 2,355 unsheltered homeless people recorded during the 2022 Point-in-Time count. That was a gain of 6 percentage points from the 2020 count and a 10 percentage-point rise from the 2019 count.
A shift in homeless people from downtown to East Honolulu has contributed to a 71% increase in the district’s share of Oahu’s unsheltered population since 2019.
“We have seen the problem of more people in this area, which is why we are promoting this initiative,” Egged said.
AT THE same time, a broader discussion has started in Waikiki about whether to start beach and park closure hours at midnight instead of 2 a.m., allowing for a five-hour closure.
The extension was briefly discussed at the Waikiki Neighborhood Board’s monthly meeting Tuesday, where it had some supporters. If it gains traction, Egged said the Waikiki Beach Special Improvement District Association also would consider expanding closure hours for the Royal Hawaiian Beach sector.
Ashley K., a homeless woman who did not want to give her full name, said Friday that the change would add additional stress to what is already an untenable situation. She said current beach closure hours keep homeless individuals off balance by forcing them to roam Waikiki in the wee hours of the morning with all of their belongings in tow.
“People wonder why some of the homeless people are unstable,” she said. “They don’t get any sleep. There are constant disruptions. We aren’t allowed to sit or stand on the sidewalks or the benches where the beaches and parks are closed. We have to keep moving. It’s exhausting.”
She said she also is concerned that additional beach closure hours may bring additional bathroom closure hours.
“The only public bathroom that is open 24/7 in Waikiki is the one at the Waikiki police substation, and you can’t use it at night because every stall is occupied by women who are afraid to sleep outside where there have been rapes,” she said. “Sometimes the only choice is to go in the ocean.”
Ashley K. added that she has lived on the beaches of Waikiki for about a year and has put her name into a homeless repatriation program that would help her return to the mainland; however, she said that the wait is long. She said she hasn’t found a shelter placement either, as most require a COVID-19 vaccination or won’t allow her to bring her dog, Baby Dukes.
Waikiki Neighborhood Board member Jacob Wiencek said he supports the Royal Hawaiian Beach closure period as well as expanding closure hours there and throughout Waikiki’s beaches and parks.
“We are all concerned with the impact of crime and homelessness on our public spaces. I’m definitely hearing from community members and HPD that they suspect Weed and Seed in Chinatown has pushed more people into Waikiki,” Wiencek said.
Waikiki resident John Deutzman, who started the discussion about expanding beach and park closure hours in Waikiki, said taking that action would make Waikiki consistent with other parts of the island and make it harder for people to “live” on the beach.
“Right now it’s the ideal lurker location,” said Deutzman, who has been advocating for increased beach closures and other nonjudicial interventions such as making landscaping and design decisions that discourage loitering. He praised the city’s earlier decisions to remove old news and pamphlet racks where people congregated in Waikiki and to install a Biki bike-sharing stand at one of the Kuhio Beach pavilions.
“It kind of sucks that we have to close the beach because the bad guys are running our lives,” he said. “But it works. The beaches are clear during the closures. Once the 5 a.m. whistle blows they start swarming back. There’s nothing illegal about hanging out after 5 a.m. — you can do it, I can do it, they can do it. What we want to do is try to make it as difficult as possible for them to live in public spaces.”
