A Honolulu City Council bill that would ban sitting and lying down on sidewalks in 11 different commercial regions of Oahu narrowly moved out of the Zoning and Planning Committee on Thursday, setting up a final vote before the full Council next month.
Bill 48 comes on the heels of the Waikiki "sit-lie" ordinance that was signed into law by Mayor Kirk Caldwell on Tuesday, prohibiting sitting and lying on sidewalks within the area bordered by the Ala Wai Canal and Kapahulu Avenue 24 hours a day. Caldwell, on Tuesday, said he was leaning toward supporting the bill.
Introduced by Councilman Ron Menor to address similar concerns raised by business people in other parts of Oahu, Bill 48 makes it a petty misdemeanor to sit or lie down on public sidewalks from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily in "areas zoned for commercial and business activities" and are designated specifically in the bill.
The islandwide measure advanced by a 3-2 margin Thursday. Zoning Chairman Ikaika Anderson and Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi joined Menor in supporting the bill. Voting "no" were Breene Harimoto and Kymberly Pine, who earlier had opposed the Waikiki sit-lie proposal because they say it unfairly targets the homeless and criminalizes homelessness.
City Managing Director Ember Shinn told committee members they should urge business owners who want the ban in their neighborhoods to submit testimony. Shinn noted that Waikiki business interests showed up at Honolulu Hale to provide "very strong, anecdotal evidence" about how their businesses were being affected adversely by street dwellers impeding access to their storefronts.
City attorneys expect any sit-lie laws to be challenged, Shinn said, and she urged Council members to collect "a factual record that shows a necessity for this type of action to be in the business districts that are the subject of Bill 48."
Committee members were also warned that continuing to add more areas to the list of proposed restricted areas may make the bill less likely to withstand constitutional challenges.
At the start of Thursday’s meeting, the bill contained eight zones in six regions: one zone each in Chinatown, downtown, McCully-Moiliili and Kailua, and two each in Waipahu and Kalihi.
Several amendments later the version of the bill that advanced Thursday includes 14 zones in 11 regions. The new inclusions were one zone in Wahiawa and two zones in Haleiwa, added by Council Chairman Ernie Martin; one zone each in Kaneohe and Waimanalo, proposed by Anderson; and one zone in the Ala Moana-Sheridan area, requested by Kobayashi.
Menor, the bill’s author, was troubled by the inclusions. "If the Council continues to include more areas into this bill … we might unintentionally be creating legal problems that could render this bill unconstitu- tional," he said. New areas could always be added to a sit-lie ordinance after it is adopted, he said.
Pine said the bill will cause negative unintended consequences. "What’s going to happen is they’re going to move into areas that are not business districts now, areas where aunties and uncles who are elderly live," she said.
Harimoto said it will be difficult for sidewalk dwellers and police to determine where the law applies. "Short of carrying around this list of streets with me as I walk around, there is no way to tell," he said.
He added that while it could be argued that Waikiki’s sidewalks are congested with people who are sitting or lying down, he’s skeptical many of the areas covered by Bill 48 could meet the same definition. "I think that really begs the lawsuits."
Kobayashi, however, said the new Waikiki sit-lie bill is already pushing sidewalk dwellers into the nearby neighborhoods she represents, including McCully-Moiliili and Ala Moana-Sheridan.
Children are being discouraged from going to the library, and seniors are being threatened when they go to the park, she said.
"I don’t like these bills either, but I have to protect the people that live in the district, the businesses that are there," Kobayashi said.
"I feel it’s my duty as their Council member to include those areas."
