Doubling down on failed sit-lie policies

What do you tell a 10-year-old kid when her father isn’t home when she gets back to her tent in Kakaako?

“Sorry, but your father was arrested because he can’t walk properly and doesn’t have a home.”

Her father, who has severe medical problems, can barely walk and relies on his daughter for assistance with daily tasks and doctors’ visits. His medical bills are what made them houseless, fear of separation or no space keep them out of shelters, and a year-long waiting list for an affordable home keep them on the streets.

Unfortunately for some Honolulu citizens, that is exactly what is happening with the sit-lie bans enacted since 2013. Now, a proposed bill is asking to expand the sit-lie ban areas to the entire state of Hawaii. The bill to make it illegal for people lie down or sit for extended periods of time in certain areas of Honolulu was proposed as a way to get homeless populations into shelters. However, this does not help these individuals and families, but hides them.

This would be the fifth expansion of the sit-lie policies, and with each expansion the homeless population is under fire for reasons that are increasingly muddied.

Studies and reports that have come out of Honolulu, Washington state, and San Francisco and Berkeley, Calif., where sit-lie bans have been enacted, show that there is no proof that these bans are getting people into shelters and, in fact, may be doing more harm than good.

Such bans allow for individuals to be arrested and possibly charged with a petty misdemeanor. This does show up on a criminal background check and we know 96 percent of employers use these to screen employees. If individuals aren’t arrested, they are ticketed and given a fine. For those who don’t have the means to pay or anywhere to go, their debt quickly adds up and they are in deeper before they are able to get themselves out. The way they are treated by those that are sent to “help” them can make them less trusting and willing to seek assistance.

I understand that the homelessness situation is not an easy one to solve and can empathize with the officials and workers who are involved with this issue. I also know that there are some individuals who participate in behavior that is detrimental to the community they are in. However, we should not be punishing the entire population for the bad deeds of the few.

If our goal is truly to help get this population sheltered and gain better access to resources than that is where our policies, bills and effort should be directed at. Designing and implementing programs that get to the root of the needs of all and ensuring they are diverse in nature.

One program that has been implemented in Honolulu and is proving successful is Housing First. A study out of the University of Hawaii at Manoa showed that two years, of the 214 people that enrolled in the program only 18 were no longer involved during the follow up, and 96% of those participants, among other things, had increased connections to community groups. This is just one example of an effective solution, but it is by no means the only solution.

So, if a person doesn’t have a place to go, the shelters and transitional homes are full, and the waiting list for affordable housing is up to a two-year wait, where do you suppose the individual or family should go if their very status of not having a place to live has been made illegal?

Zainisha Ogwaro, now working on her master’s in social work at the University of Southern California, is a YMCA program director.