Honolulu Lite
Honolulu is labeled
one mean city'Live Aloha -- Or We'll Beat the Stuffing Outta Ya!"
I think that should be Honolulu's new motto, now that Honolulu has officially been named one of the meanest cities in the country.
Honolulu, mean? The city where traffic comes to a complete standstill at intersections with four-way stop signs because obsessively courteous drivers insist on yielding the right of way back and forth to each other? The city that shows free outdoor movies for Waikiki visitors every weekend? The city whose buses dedicate a third of the seating to the handicapped, the aged, the easily confused and the hot and bothered? The city where every plate lunch contains TWO scoops of rice?
Yes. Honolulu is a mean city. At least according to a couple of outfits called the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.
As Star-Bulletin writer Treena Shapiro reported recently, these two groups conducted a study of 80 communities across the country to see which ones were the meanest. Of course, their only criteria for judging meanness was to look at how cities treat the homeless. On the surface, that might seem like a humane and noble enterprise, sticking up for the homeless. But it is ultimately unfair because the only way these advocacy groups would be happy with the way a city treats the homeless is to make sure that all the homeless have homes, in which case there would be no homeless. And so, cities without any homeless would be considered nice, while cities that have any homeless at all end up being labeled mean.
This is not fair because communities that have no homeless generally have gates and guards. This does not mean those communities are nice, it just means they are rich.
Yes, Honolulu does have some homeless. But it's not mean to them. Citizens do not chase the homeless out of parks with baseball bats. You could argue that while there's always room for improvement, being homeless in Honolulu in January is a lot better than being homeless in Green Bay, Wisc. The climate alone makes Honolulu nicer to the homeless than most cities.
It is true that there are thousands of people exposed to the elements every day in Honolulu. They are forced to lie on sun-baked beaches and under shady banyan trees in parks. They are called "tourists." And they pay for the privilege.
One of the things that made Honolulu "mean" in the eyes of the advocacy groups was that the Legislature unsuccessfully tried to pass laws that would have made it illegal for people to sleep on benches in city parks. In other words, it didn't pass the law. You're a mean city if you don't pass laws keeping the homeless out of parks?
We also haven't passed laws forcing the homeless to get jobs. I guess that makes us truly despicable.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite