It’s happened five or six times since Tracy Martin fell on hard times in July, moving his wife and baby daughter from a home in Pearl City to the sidewalks of Kakaako.
Usually around 6 a.m., as the sun rises, the trucks and vehicles gather on Ilalo Street as city Department of Facility Maintenance staff prepare to scatter the makeshift community of families and chronic homeless who live in camps there. Word travels fast of the looming sweep, and campers — now used to the drill — quickly pack their belongings so the city won’t confiscate them.
"We just hide in the park or hang out and wait and then come back again," Martin, 48, said Wednesday as his 2-year-old daughter, Thalia, played with a scooter in the family’s sidewalk encampment. Whether it’s a few hours or a few days, the camp always returns.
In July, the city enacted a new sidewalk ordinance — commonly known as Bill 7 — aimed at keeping Honolulu’s sidewalks safe and clear of "nuisances" that could block public use.
But in its first six months, the controversial measure has delivered mixed results. At times, enforcement amounts to little more than a momentary reshuffling of Honolulu’s homeless and where they camp.
That’s despite the city having spent about $333,000 so far to enforce the new ordinance, removing tents and camps on more than 200 occasions at nearly 25 sites around town.
In an island city with a steep cost of living and limited affordable housing options, the tents and camps almost always reappear.
"We never expected this enforcement to solve the underlying problem," Jesse Broder Van Dyke, a spokesman for Mayor Kirk Caldwell, said last week. "This is just one part of a multifaceted approach" to address the issue.
Broder Van Dyke pointed to Thomas Square, where (de)Occupy movement activists camped for two years straight, and Kalakaua Avenue at the site of the old Hard Rock Cafe, as areas successfully cleared under the sidewalk ordinance.
Yet at the same time, about 40 tents and makeshift camps lined Ohe, Olomehani and Ahui streets in Kakaako on Monday, resembling a small village complete with cooking and storage supplies, toys and tricycles.
THAT SAME afternoon more than a dozen tents dotted the fringes of Aala Street facing Beretania Street, as well as six in Inha Park and five or so along the Ala Wai Canal south of Kapiolani Boulevard.
In addition to those spots, city crews have used the ordinance to remove encampments along King, Hotel, Pauahi and Coyne streets and other city streets where some of Oahu’s estimated 4,500 or so homeless, based on early 2013 counts, tend to settle.
The latest enforcement effort action came Friday when city crews removed property on a grassy strip along Iwilei Road, just several hundred feet from an Institute for Human Services shelter.
Despite the constant reappearance of the camps, the sidewalk ordinance enforcement is "effective and necessary to ensure residents and visitors are afforded safe access and use of city facilities, parks and sidewalks," city officials maintained in an emailed statement.
The city’s enforcement actions, they say, are responses to community complaints — and they don’t consider them "sweeps." Enforcement crews photograph the areas before they move in and then immediately afterward to help gauge how effective they’re being, city spokesman Jay Parasco said.
Still, the cat-and-mouse nature of the enforcement leaves many of the area’s homeless campers saying the ordinance merely harasses them and accomplishes little else. Campers say they have to more carefully guard their belongings to avoid them being confiscated. Under the ordinance the possessions can be reclaimed for a $200 storage fee.
"We’re trying to get off the streets but the sweeps make it hard," said Martin, who said he lost his job after suffering a heart attack in May and that the family later was evicted. "It’s hard to go look for your job. Sweeps basically affect everyone. It paralyzes us. We don’t know when it’s coming."
From July 1 through the end of 2013, enforcement crews confiscated property from those camped on Honolulu streets in more than 200 separate incidents, city officials report. The ordinance allows people to appeal those seizures.
To date, there have been 12 appeals filed with the city to waive the $200 fee, according to Parasco. In only one of those cases did a hearings officer find that the petitioner presented sufficient justification based on financial grounds to waive the fee.
Meanwhile, the head of one of Oahu’s key shelters says the city ought to step up its enforcement of the sidewalk ordinance.
"I don’t think they have enough resources to enforce it to have the impact it should," said Connie Mitchell, executive director of the Institute for Human Services. "I know it’s very costly, but if you go to any other city this just wouldn’t be allowed. There hasn’t been the ability to enforce it in a way that is consistent enough. But they’re starting to make more of a dent."
Two of IHS’ shelters — one for women and one for families — are currently full to capacity, Mitchell said. The women’s shelter sees new spots become available daily, but there’s a two-week waiting list at the family shelter, she added.
The removal of (de)Occupy campers at Thomas Square, which borders the Neal S. Blaisdell Center and the Honolulu Museum of Art in the heart of the city, comes despite ongoing legal challenges against the more than a dozen sweeps that took place there last year.
Those campers, who’d been at the square since 2011, "decided to take a break" this past Thanksgiving, said Doug Matsuoka, an outspoken supporter of the (de)Occupy movement.
"It’s really rigorous, manning an encampment," Matsuoka said Tuesday. "It was a war (with the city). Actually, it was a battle that went two years straight."
The group intends to eventually re-establish a presence in Honolulu — although it could be at another location, Matsuoka added.
As (de)Occupy prepares to get back on the streets, Martin said he’s trying his best to get his family off them.
"You see all these children?" Martin said Wednesday, pointing across Ohe Street at children playing in a nearby camp.
"I’m sure he didn’t have all these kids in mind when he wrote the bill," Martin said, referring to Mayor Kirk Caldwell, who signed Bill 7 into law. Toys and other kids’ items are often confiscated in the sweeps — including his daughter’s school desk, Martin said.
Caldwell said the ordinance in part aims to discourage families from living on the sidewalk — and to seek out assistance to find housing instead.
He noted that the "compassionate disruption" actions are designed to be paired with permanent housing solutions, including his Housing First initiative that will aim to give immediate housing for those most in need before addressing the issues that often accompany homelessness such as substance abuse, mental illness and joblessness.
Enforcement of the "sidewalk nuisance ordinance" and the related "stored property ordinance" have made a clear difference in some areas and created safer and healthier neighborhoods, the mayor said.
"It’s resulted in a changed pattern in significant areas," he said.
When the actions were first conducted in early 2013, the city collected about 11 tons of items a week, Caldwell said. That’s now down to three tons a week, he said. "If we didn’t do this, on average three times a week, how many more tons would be on our sidewalks every week?"
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Reporter Gordon Y.K. Pang contributed to this report.
