Efforts by two Korean community groups to set up a cultural monument park on a small patch of green in one of Honolulu’s busiest neighborhoods have been stymied in recent years by the presence of homeless encampments.
The community groups and the roughly 20 people camped in and around Pawaa In-Ha Park say they’ve had a relatively peaceful coexistence.
But a growing source of frustration is an increase in the disrespect toward the monuments, including urination and defecation on them, and clothes hung to dry along them, said So Suk Ko, who heads the Pawaa In-Ha Park Committee.
She and colleagues envisioned the monument park honoring Hawaii’s Korean immigrants as a magnet for visitors from Korea and elsewhere. But the 1.68-acre parcel "now is the Homeless Park," Ko said through an interpreter.
When she suggests to other Korean community leaders that they meet to chat in the park, they’ve refused, she said.
Ko said visitors from South Korea know of the park’s significance to Korean immigrants and that it’s one of the few public areas that feature the Korean language. But she acknowledged that she has been reluctant to take Korean dignitaries to the park, even when asked.
Hawaii’s Korean population helped raise funds for the first of the monuments. Marking the centennial of Koreans in Hawaii, it was erected at what was then simply called Pawaa Park in 2003.
In 2008 the city of Incheon sponsored a second sculpture to honor its sister-city relationship with Honolulu. Ko paid for the landscaping around the sculpture herself.
Shortly thereafter then-Mayor Mufi Hannemann granted the request by Ko’s group to adopt the park, which was then renamed Pawaa In-Ha Park in 2010.
"In-Ha" is a blending of the words Incheon and Hawaii.
Two stones, which mark the third monument area, were donated by Incheon’s InHa University and placed in 2013. InHa University was founded by Syngman Rhee, South Korea’s first president. From Hawaii, he led the fight for Korean independence.
Two stone identification signs, one each along South King and Young streets, are considered the fourth and fifth monument areas. One was donated by local businessman Donald Kim; the other, by InHa University.
Ko said she doesn’t want anyone to force the homeless away, but hopes that at some point they will leave on their own. In the meantime, she said, she’s hoping that they show more respect and allow the monuments to stay clean.
Ko’s group and the Korean-American Foundation of Hawaii pay for a person to clean the monument areas once a week.
Foundation member Rex Kim, Donald Kim’s son and a nearby resident, said he is frustrated by the stalemate.
Kim said he’s reluctant to walk with his young daughter through the park even though she has lessons at Sanders Piano next door.
"The park is for everybody in the community," Kim said. "It’s not right for a few people to hijack our public parks. It just kind of burns me. There are many services available, so I don’t understand why they need to do that."
But some of the homeless at the park say they have no choice.
Duane "Ku" Souza, his wife, Serena, and their two daughters spend days on the mauka-Diamond Head corner, closest to the intersection at Young and Kaheka streets. The family is allowed to stay at the Sanders parking lot at night in exchange for keeping watch in the area.
A former fisherman, the 50-year-old Souza said the family has tried to stay at several temporary shelters but that his daughters, ages 4 and 2, got sick there.
The family has been at Pawaa In-Ha Park for about two years.
He and his family help care for the park and make sure that drug addicts and less desirable elements are kept out, he said. The person hired by the Korean groups to come in once a week cleans only the areas around the monuments, he said.
"I don’t see nobody else cleaning the park except the city and county," he said. "And after hours … the city and county is not here."
Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration has conducted sidewalk enforcement actions against the encampments on a weekly basis for about a year.
The mayor said he recognizes that the homeless simply move to the state park several hundred feet away on the Keeaumoku Street side of the block and return to Pawaa In-Ha when the city crews leave. But the number of homeless at Pawaa In-Ha has dropped since enforcement actions began, he said.
"If we stopped, there’d just be more tents again, more stuff," Caldwell said. "We have to keep our sidewalks open for people to walk on, not to camp on."
A majority of homeless want to be in permanent housing, he said, and his administration is proposing $18.9 million in next year’s budget for a Housing First program to help that effort.
Rose Mawae, 36, stays on the opposite side of the park with her boyfriend, uncle and friends.
The city actions "make it hard on us sometimes, but they need to understand too that some of us don’t have anyplace else to go," Mawae said. "We don’t want to be in the shelters because there are more problems there than being out in the streets. It’s safer to be here in a family community where everybody knows each other and tries to help their friends."
She urged the community groups to talk to the homeless there if they have concerns. "They don’t have to be afraid. We’re not hard to get along with. My name is Rose. Come see me."
Told of the growing frustration over defecation and urination on the monuments, Mawae said she will talk to those living there.
"Let’s see if we can’t change that," she said.
Mawae said many of the disrespectful acts may be by "visitors who bring their drama here," including those going home after a night of drinking at Keeaumoku Street bars.
The park is also a stone’s throw from the headquarters of the Unite HERE Local 5 union, which has allowed people to stay outside its premises in exchange for keeping the area clean at night.
United HERE Political organizer Cade Watanabe, who holds occasional outdoor meetings at the park, said he opposes the city’s enforcement actions.
"We don’t see the utility in criminalizing this segment of our population," Watanabe said.
One way of solving the issue of urine and feces on the monuments is for the city to put up restroom facilities there, Watanabe said.
Caldwell, however, dismissed that idea. At parks frequented by the homeless, restrooms "tend to create more problems than they solve," he said.
