Keeping personal property such as furniture, clothing or household goods in public spaces such as sidewalks and parks would be banned under a proposal advancing in the City Council.

Infractions would not result in citations. Violators would be given written notice and 24 hours to remove the property. Failure to do so would result in confiscation of the items by the city.

Bill 54 advanced out of a Council committee on Tuesday over the objections of critics who said it targets the homeless.

"All it’s going to do is get people to move from one area to another for a day or two, then come right on back," said Daniel Gluck, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii. "There’s going to be no net improvement. You’re just going to have people moving from one area to another, then to another, then to another."

The ACLU opposed the bill, calling it another "piecemeal" attempt by the city to deal with homelessness that could lead to a legal challenge. "If you have people who have no choice but to be homeless and you are depriving them of their possessions, you are going to have constitutional concerns," Gluck said at Tuesday’s committee meeting. "With this legislation and with all the other piecemeal legislation that’s directed toward the homeless that the city has, you’re ending up with the same situation where it is in fact illegal to be homeless."

The city administration says the bill does not target homeless people because it would apply to anyone, anywhere, regardless of circumstance.

"The main thing is to get public property unobstructed," said Lori Nishimura, executive assistant to Mayor Peter Carlisle.

Since the beginning of the year, Nishimura said, the city has received 104 complaints regarding public areas being blocked or obstructed by personal property, and not all were related to homeless individuals. She did not have a specific number.

Complaints ranged from basketball hoops on sidewalks to stacks of tires and people who have set up vending areas on sidewalks.

"We did have a number of complaints of people putting objects in the sidewalk so other people couldn’t use it," Nishimura said.

Jon Van Dyke, a constitutional law professor at the University of Hawaii who helped the city draft the bill, said he believes it meets legal scrutiny.

"This bill is a law of general applicability that will apply to all of us," he said. "It is designed to protect the public space and allow all of us to use and enjoy the public space of our community."

The Council’s Safety, Economic Development and Government Affairs Committee advanced Bill 54, which now goes to the full Council for the second of three required readings at its next public meeting.