Expand sit-lie law but keep pushing for ‘safe havens’

Stopgap measures are acceptable, and sometimes even essential, in an emergency, as long as everyone remembers the stopper is going to eventually crumble — and that the gap is still there.

The sit-lie ordinances that have been passed by the Honolulu City Council are such efforts to manage the homelessness crisis while in pursuit of a solution.

City and state officials have left themselves open to criticism that too much time has been wasted on political posturing and too little spent on carving out some safe haven more appropriate than the streets and sidewalks of Honolulu.

Bill 44, which the Council passed last week, expanded the sit-lie restrictions that are aimed at keeping business thoroughfares open to the public.

Unless and until a new emergency “safe zone” is created as an alternative, that may be the last defensible expansion of this law, which by itself simply transfers the problem to other areas.

But Mayor Kirk Caldwell should sign the bill in the interest of keeping the targeted areas from hardening as encampments where, increasingly, the homeless themselves become vulnerable to criminal behavior.

In addition, a second measure, Bill 46, aims to regulate activities that threaten water quality along streams and also should be signed.

The lesson the city may have learned is evident in Kakaako Makai, where, after the initial crackdown against sitting or lying on sidewalks cleared Waikiki and major business sectors downtown, a small collection of tents multiplied to roughly 300 makeshift dwellings.

The city also prohibited storing personal property on sidewalks. Officials ran periodic enforcement raids in Kakaako but tailed off that practice. A de facto tent city grew and hardened in place.

The June 29 assault on state Rep. Tom Brower (D, Waikiki-Ala Moana-Kakaako) focused attention on what had been a back-burner issue.

Since then, a teen camper assaulted a woman drumming in the adjacent park. There’s been one homeless victim of a sexual assault, another robbed by a knife- and pipe-wielding gang and a third who was beaten and robbed of his bike.

This all happened against a backdrop of complaints from the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center, the University of Hawaii Cancer Center and the John A. Burns School of Medicine, where officials have cited incidents of vandalism, public defecation and other public safety issues.

Allowing this situation to fester — or, worse, allowing other hardened communities to take root — is bad for everyone and hazardous to the safety and health of the homeless themselves, above all.

The most recent efforts by the Council have given pause to those who worry about policies that target the homeless and the potential constitutional violations inherent in such actions.

That’s why the restrictions have to be focused on principles of protecting public health, as affirmed by Bill 46, as well as on protecting the public passageways affecting businesses.

Advocates for the homeless last week pushed back hard against both bills, calling for a ban on sweeps until there’s “a place for people to live.”

Indeed, time is running out for the city and the state, through the recently formed leadership teams, to produce a safer solution for homeless families.

Even as these efforts intensify, as they should, leaders must not take the “out of sight, out of mind” approach.

Left alone, these problems have a way of surging back into view, in the worst way possible.