The sit-lie prohibition enacted last fall in Waikiki was meant to be but one peg in a multi-pronged strategy to clean up the tourist district that is Hawaii’s economic engine and also provide housing and comprehensive social services to the chronically homeless.

Absent enough of the latter supports, enforcement to keep people from living on the sidewalks serves mainly to move the homeless along to some other Oahu neighborhood, promoting an elaborate human shell game that obscures the depth of misery on an island some still like to pretend is paradise.

Homelessness on Oahu is getting worse, not better. The latest annual Point-in-Time Count, conducted in January 2015, found there were 4,903 homeless people on Oahu, including 1,939 living on the streets; both categories were worse than in previous years.

To be sure, enforcement of the sit-lie law alone has been a viable solution for some, namely the businesses in spruced up Waikiki and in the Chinatown and downtown business districts to which the sit-lie ban was later extended.

Those enterprises faced economic disruption from the continual presence of what some people euphemistically call homeless campers and others less charitably term chronic vagrants.

The businesses’ problems were not minor, and needed to be addressed, lest customers and clients be driven away amid the unseemly atmosphere.

But a solution for those businesses did not mean homes for the homeless in most cases. It did mean problems for the nearby neighborhoods to which homeless campers moved, a reality made all the more stark by the fact that more Oahu merchants are clamoring for their districts to be included in the ever-expanding sit-lie ban.

None of this is surprising, of course, to either opponents of the sit-lie ban, who insist that such laws criminalize poverty and homelessness, or to its proponents, who argue that strong measures must be taken to keep public pathways safe and freely accessible. What is somewhat surprising, and disappointing, is that Hawaii’s governmental efforts to address homelessness have fallen short of the promised multi-pronged approach.

The bickering between Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration and members of the City Council is one example of the lack of a cohesive, comprehensive, collaborative approach that is needed for the city to make headway in this crisis.

Also, the lack of visible leadership from Gov. David Ige and of any sense of urgency on the state level have been discouraging, even as the problem grows.

The Honolulu City Council is moving swiftly to expand the scope of the sit-lie ordinance, via Bill 6, despite warnings from the city administration that making enforcement too broad could weaken the measure’s ability to withstand legal challenge.

City Managing Director Roy Amemiya warned the Zoning and Planning Committee, which advanced the measure to the full Council, that city attorneys won’t sign off on the current draft. He further irked some members by urging them to support funding for a new city office that is supposed to help coordinate affordable housing initiatives and other efforts to stem homelessness, "lobbying" that two council members called inappropriate.

It was predicted that the original sit-lie ban would cause a domino effect throughout urban Honolulu. It’s not fair for only some businesses to be shielded from problems that have spilled over to other neighborhoods. City attorneys and City Council members must make a concerted effort to refine Bill 6 into a law that will stand up in court.

Even more important, the city, working with state, federal and private partners, must deliver on its promise to provide rapid rehousing and comprehensive social services as it enforces the sit-lie ban, whether the ban is expanded or not.

"Compassionate disruption" only resonates as a humane strategy for Oahu if it solves more problems than it causes.