Listening to public doesn’t always ensure good policy

A City Council committee tonight will again hear what people have to say about a housing development that has been a fierce point of contention on Oahu for more than a decade.

The meeting about Koa Ridge, a huge project consisting of 5,000 houses, will not likely inject new information or perspectives about the much-litigated and debated Castle & Cooke plan.

It comes as a response to requests for a discussion about the Council’s pending decision on rezoning 576 acres of land considered prime for agriculture.

Responding to citizen voices is a good thing if you’re a Council member with lofty political aspirations like Ikaika Anderson and his colleague Stanley Chang, both of whom are hoping to vault from Honolulu Hale to Capitol Hill.

Chang, responding to complaints from people annoyed with having to dodge other people who lounge around on the city’s hot, grubby sidewalks, is proposing that such unhygienic behavior be outlawed.

Sincere or not, Chang claims his bill isn’t targeting people who don’t have other places to lounge, like houses or apartments or a rented room. No, his primary concern is for safety “for all members of the public,” he says, parroting the formula city officials have used and reused to nibble around the edges of homelessness, a social problem that has received more political attention as its growing contours disturb an image-sensitive tourism economy.

Chang’s idea merely adds another step to the homeless shuffle. Though the mayor and the Council say their goal is to get people off the street and into housing, shooing them from parks and sidewalks seems to be the priority while the housing part lags far behind, as it has for years and years.

Homelessness is an intractable problem with a host of differing roots, and while it is safe to say it will never disappear, the city has not had the strong leadership and compassion needed to help those who can’t or won’t help themselves.

All members of the public, which, by the way, also includes the disenfranchised, have yet to see a wide-ranging, well-conceived plan backed by determination and political will.

As for Koa Ridge, the pros and cons of the project have been thoroughly examined. The final accounting comes down to whether the Council believes there are benefits in building thousands of houses across a broad swath of uplands in Central Oahu, despite the massive traffic congestion suburban sprawl will generate, despite the lack of commuting options, despite low and slow potential for new and sustained employment, despite the loss of rich agricultural acres and the green spaces tourists have come to expect.

Council members will have to decide if further surrendering the quality of life on Oahu and ceding to developers’ pockets the small remains of this crowded island’s natural attributes is the short-sighted core of their political aspirations.

Or if they will find the backbone to upend the expectations of powerful economic forces.