Hammer won’t ease homelessness

The homeless problem on Oahu is frustrating, with highly visible encampments of street people who resist help and renounce intervention. Still, we as a community must never sink to cheap street vigilantism and pretend it is a valid solution.

That’s what state Rep. Tom Brower did, patrolling the streets of his 22nd District armed with a sledgehammer and destroying the shopping carts that homeless people use to tote their meager belongings. Brower, a Democrat who has been in the state House since 2006, took pride in rousting people who are illegally sleeping at bus stops and seizing what he deemed abandoned shopping carts. If the carts were clearly marked with a store’s logo, he returned them to the store. If not, he destroyed them with his sledgehammer and recycled the pieces. Brower estimated he’d returned four carts and destroyed 20 over the past few weeks.

He took obvious satisfaction from his self-proclaimed "tough-guy" approach: "When you are walking down the sidewalk with a sledgehammer, people get out of your way." No doubt.

Two days after his methods made the news, Brower said he is putting down the sledgehammer. It’s not surprising, though, that some of his constituents consider him a hero; such vigilantism always find fans.

More perceptive are those who recognize Brower’s bullying tactics for what they were: the physical expression of near-total frustration over a problem that he and many others were elected to help solve and simply have been unable to manage.

But manage we must, or we invite deeper problems of rogue behavior.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell, city and police officials must heed the citizen frustration that has reached a boiling point, and gain control of our growing shanty-town problem. They cannot abdicate their duty to enforce existing laws to keep parks, sidewalks and public spaces clear, done in tandem with promoting various services available to help the homeless.

Disappointingly, long-range solutions to homelessness — developing or incentivizing more low-income rental housing is a critical component — are further in the future than they should be. City and state leaders — Brower is one of them — must galvanize the political will to bring such shelters to fruition. This homeless problem will never ease unless the supply of housing and services increase to meet demands.

But, the absence of a comprehensive long-range plan should not paralyze our city in the here and now. There are laws on the books that keep law-abiding citizens from loitering and despoiling our public parks, streets and other spaces; they need to be applied to housed and homeless citizens alike.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor credited with tackling that city’s chronic homelessness, once reflected: "The correct, loving, caring social policy is to engage, not ignore … to discourage, not encourage. We would tell them, you can’t live on the street; you’re not allowed to. … It’s not good for them. It’s not good for the city … It means they are crying out for help, and it should not be ignored."

It’s high time Hawaii’s leaders deal with the problem, via continuous enforcement of laws to keep public spaces clear, not by Brower’s rogue means. He had described his patrols as an example of what citizens can do to supplement the efforts of lawmakers and nonprofits, but clearly his is not a strategy that should take root. There’s a very real risk that someone will get hurt. It’s not a big leap to imagine a copycat taking a sledgehammer not to a shopping cart, but to the hapless human being using it. And how long before a few homeless individuals wise up, join forces and fight back?

Elsewhere in Waikiki, a better model than Brower’s is unfolding to combat the blight associated with homelessness. Outrigger Enterprises has adopted Princess Kaiulani Triangle Park from the city, hired a commercial landscaper to maintain it and wants to close the green space nightly from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., so that it will be in better condition for all in the daytime.

Forcing folks out of the area at night follows the "compassionate disruption" model that some advocates herald as a way to steer the chronically homeless into shelters and drug- and mental-health treatment. Having a hotel chain take a leading role seems right, given Waikiki’s importance to the tourism industry.

Such initiatives need to be employed, just as the city needs to step up its continual clearing of encampments. Clearly, though, there is no need for vigilantes to reach for a sledgehammer.