[ OUR OPINION ]

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Honolulu needs
to improve the way
it treats homeless

THE ISSUE Twenty high school students passed out items to the homeless in commemoration of those who have died.

HONOLULU has joined more than 100 other cities in commemorating those who die homeless. About 20 students from Moanalua High School observed the National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day on Monday by passing out bottled water, toilet paper, toothbrushes and shampoo at Ala Moana Beach Park, but the teens' benevolence does not overcome Honolulu's designation last month as one of the nation's meanest cities in its treatment of the homeless.

About 6,000 people in Hawaii are homeless, and about 30 die every year. Dec. 21 was chosen for the annual remembrance because it is the first day of winter and the longest night of the year. "The memorial day is a way to make sure no one's life goes unnoticed," says Michael Stoops of the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless.

The coalition ranks Honolulu in ninth place on its list of the nation's 20 "meanest cities" among 179 communities assessed, a downgrading of its 19th rating last year. Among states, Hawaii was third meanest, behind California and Florida.

In its assessment, the coalition documented laws that target homeless people, such as anti-camping, anti-panhandling and loitering laws, and police abuse of existing laws. The nation's meanest city, it concluded, is Little Rock, Ark., where police forced campers out of 27 homeless areas in July.

The report cited the Hawaii Legislature's enactment of a law that allows police to arrest a homeless person who returns to a public property location -- a sidewalk, bench, beach, library or any other public area -- less than a year after being told to depart that area. The law should be repealed.

Other reasons for Honolulu's dubious ranking were last year's placement of barbed wire under highway viaducts, the state's policy for park maintenance workers to take the unattended belongings of homeless people, and the state's bulldozing into the ground of tents, clothes and other possessions of the homeless at Waianae Beach Park.

"The cruelest thing of keeping people out is not opening up alternatives of where they can go," Lynn Maunakea, executive director of the Institute for Human Services, told the Star-Bulletin's Rosemarie Bernardo last year. "When you take things away, it would be good to put something in place." Maunakea said recently that Honolulu "definitely earned the designation."

Governor Lingle plans to use state land for construction of 17,000 units of affordable housing, including 1,800 for the chronically homeless, over a five-year period. Mayor Harris says a federally financed transitional housing complex for 150 homeless people in Waianae will be completed by the end of next year.

Until then, Honolulu and Hawaii can expect to remain among the nation's meanest.