Hawaii County clearing
squatters off shoreline

HILO » The 22-year-old woman living in a makeshift shack at Hilo's Puumaile shoreline area described her position bluntly yesterday: "I'm a squatter."

Beginning two days ago and continuing through Monday, about 50 squatters on Hawaii County land are leaving the site where the pavement on Kalanianaole Avenue runs out after passing the Keaukaha area. The area is sometimes known as King's Landing, although that name properly belongs to a site three miles down the coast, past a different, legal encampment on Hawaiian Homes land.

As early as 2002, when the 40.6-acre Puumaile site belonged to the state, the Department of Land and Natural Resources started warning residents they would have to go eventually.

The nearest toilets are a quarter-mile walk to a county park. "It's not a healthy or safe situation for anyone down there," said Billy Kenoi, executive assistant to Mayor Harry Kim.

Long intended for use as a park, the land was acquired by the county through an executive order of the governor on Oct. 26. The county moved toward action, which Kenoi calls "restoration of a shoreline area."

Although next Monday was set as the deadline for squatters to leave, the county is trying to avoid the word "eviction" and to use humane procedures, Kenoi said.

"We want to do this with respect, compassion and dignity," he said. County police, assisted by state Land Department officers, seemed to be heeding the message.

Resident Randy Chong could not get his car started, the result of a bad electrical coil. Officer DuWayne Waipa asked Chong if he would like the police to help him get another one. Chong said he could handle it alone.

In the background, Land Department officers hammered at an empty shack with sledges. Suddenly there was a huge crash as a line tied to a truck pulled the remains of the shack to the ground.

No house is destroyed until people have moved, Kenoi said. The county provides storage for belongings in shipping containers at the county's civic auditorium.

Representatives from about a dozen agencies had visited two weeks earlier, explaining to residents the help they could offer, Kenoi said.

The woman who called herself a squatter, giving only her first name, Fran, said the police action was "part fair" because authorities gave advance warning.

"They could have just come in here and arrested us all," she said.

Fran has lived at the Puumaile camp for five years, she said. Before that, she grew up for 15 years at a camp at the end of the Hilo breakwater until a court order forced that encampment to close in 2001.

She had a housekeeping job at a West Hawaii hotel but gave it up after a month because the daily grind of driving to the other side of the island was too much, she said.

Even if she had money to rent an apartment, landlords also want references. "It's hard for us to get references," she said.

Kenoi knows the problems. "It's a difficult housing market. It's not possible to find housing for everybody," he said.

But the county is working with agencies such as Faith Against Drugs, which offers housing for as little as $350 a month, he said.