Jenna, a 15-year-old, was still eating breakfast at 8:30 Thursday morning — noodles and a cup of coffee — when a Department of Facilities Maintenance employee approached her family in Kakaako and read a city message from his clipboard.
The Star-Advertiser is withholding Jenna’s last name.
The five related families of 20 or so people, some of whom said they’ve been homeless for two years, would have 15 minutes to clear their makeshift camp and belongings from the Ohe Street sidewalk — part of the latest sweeps by city and state officials to clear Oahu parks and sidewalks used by homeless as overnight campsites.
The teenager and her ohana scrambled to pack everything they own — toys, clothing, kitchen supplies, coolers, tarps and other items were loaded into grocery carts and strollers — as city staff in bright orange vests and hard hats, and about 10 Honolulu police officers and state sheriff’s personnel, stood nearby. An idling garbage truck waited down the street to dispose of anything the family didn’t want.
Young children helped their parents haul garbage bags of belongings to a grassy area about a half-block down the street, where officials promptly told them they had to find somewhere else to go.
Thursday’s sweeps dispersed dozens of homeless who camp overnight around the Kakaako Makai Gateway Park area and the Ala Wai Promenade. They follow the city’s new sidewalk ordinance, which went into effect July 1. It allows city workers to remove any item deemed a sidewalk nuisance and for people to retrieve any items seized if they pay a $200 fee. The city is ramping up enforcement efforts, doing sweeps once a week since the ordinance took effect, said city spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke.
At the Kakaako park Thursday, city officials said people living on the sidewalk had been warned that increased sweeps would soon be coming.
The sweeps, which removed many homeless family members from the sidewalks but didn’t designate where they should go, highlight the state’s larger affordable-housing crisis: Several of those affected Thursday said they’d arrived in Hawaii from Micronesia and had no affordable place to live after overcrowding forced them from relatives’ homes.
There are between 8,000 and 10,000 people on the waiting list for state public housing with an estimated 10-year wait, said Jun Yang, executive director of the city Office of Housing. The city’s waiting list for federally subsidized housing is so full that it’s closed off to new applicants, he added.
Typically at least one outreach group that offers assistance to Oahu’s homeless residents accompanies the sweeps, Yang said. On Thursday, representatives of the Institute for Human Services had been scheduled to assist, but a last-minute emergency prevented them from participating, he said.
Eventually, Waikiki Health Center workers arrived to see whether they could help any of the family members get into the Next Step shelter in Kakaako. By midday Thursday, Waikiki Health had 13 new applicants for the shelter who were affected by the sweep, shelter manager Lambert Lum said. But the application process involves background checks, children’s birth certificates and health records, officials said. The process can take up to a month, depending on how quickly the applicants move to get in the shelter, Lum said.
In the meantime those applicants remain in limbo. Most typically stay in nearby parks, Lum said.
On Thursday about 20 of those removed in the sweeps eventually sought shelter under trees in Kakaako Waterfront Park, where they weren’t pursued by city and state officials.
Where the homeless should go after sweeps but before they’re admitted to shelters presents a dilemma, Yang said. "We’re trying to figure that out. We’re trying to find a solution," he said.
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Star-Advertiser reporter Gregg K. Kakesako contributed to this report.
