Select an option below to continue reading this premium story.
Already a Honolulu Star-Advertiser subscriber? Log in now to continue reading.
The final vote on a measure expanding the city’s sit-lie law into five public malls in downtown Honolulu and Chinatown was delayed by the Honolulu City Council on Wednesday.
Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga, Bill 62’s author, said she asked for the measure to be sent back to the Council Zoning and Planning Committee to address concerns raised by Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration and others.
"It is our intention to try to work with them as well as the community to iron out these problem areas," Fukunaga explained to her colleagues.
After the meeting, Fukunaga said the committee would work on the bill to iron out concerns raised by the administration, including the facts that the city defines malls differently than sidewalks and they are overseen by different agencies.
The five malls are Union Mall and Fort Street Mall downtown, and College Walk Mall, Sun Yat Sen Mall and Kekaulike Mall in Chinatown. The bill calls for the prohibition to be in place from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.
The bill was introduced on the heels of the recent passage of bills that make it illegal to sit and lie on city sidewalks in Waikiki and business areas of 15 other Oahu neighborhoods. Without including the malls in the prohibition, merchants and other Chinatown and downtown leaders argued, homeless people will instead congregate in the malls outside the ban, impeding traffic flow and commerce.
Critics of sit-lie laws argue that they criminalize homelessness and unfairly target those living on the streets.