KAILUA-KONA — The cleanup at Old Airport Park is posing more of a logistical challenge than the new administration anticipated when it made the project a priority soon after assuming office.
Pressure from Mayor Harry Kim and a deluge of calls flooding the Kona Police Department and the Department of Parks and Recreation ratcheted up the urgency to find a solution at a meeting of stakeholders convened Tuesday by Hawaii County Assistant Housing Administrator Lance Niimi.
The original plan to clear homeless out of the park, which was to be followed by an extensive clean-up effort, was slated for April. Niimi and Director of Parks and Recreation Charmaine Kamaka said the county is now hoping to move forward with the effort in August, though no specific date has been firmly established.
Delays have ensued as the county continues butting up against one pesky problem: Once the park is cleared, where do the homeless go and how does the county keep them from returning to their former, illegal campgrounds?
“If you do the sweep at (the park) without a solid plan right then and there, it’s like hitting a bees nest and they’re all going to swarm around,” Nathan Hakeem, outreach worker with HOPE Services Hawaii, explained. “It’s going to cause a bigger problem for businesses in the Old Industrial Area for sure.”
Attendees at the meeting explained some homeless are already starting to set up camp outside of HOPE’s Friendly Place on Pawai Place. The numbers of homeless congregating in the area are likely to balloon if homeless aren’t provided another place to go.
The first iteration of the clean-up plan, along with all those that followed, included designating a temporary site for the homeless displaced by efforts to clear the park.
Niimi said 14 sites were evaluated, the most tenable of which proved to be a plot of land above the intersection of Henry Street and Palani Road. The plot is owned by the Queen Liliuokalani Trust.
A land swap between the trust and the county is the likely path forward, which Niimi said is promising and may include the eventual relocation of the micro housing units in the Old Industrial Area to the new site.
The details of the swap, however, will take time to iron out. Niimi said the trust is understandably hesitant in the meantime to allow immediate access for dozens of homeless.
Niimi added the county is trying to work out a proposal that would allow for rapid relocation of the park’s homeless but that he is unsure of its success. And the problems with a temporary, open-air homeless camp only begin there.
Scott Morishige, Gov. David Ige’s coordinator on homelessness, said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which provide federal funding to help Hawaii combat its homeless epidemic, have assumed positions opposing the formalizing of homeless tent encampments.
Morishige chairs a state committee that will examine so-called “safe zones” and report back to the Legislature before next session. He said Tuesday, however, that he would urge county officials to discuss any financial implications with HUD and the USICH before moving forward.
“There is some concern for possibly putting federal funding for homelessness at risk,” Morishige said.
He also noted an encampment initiative similar to what the county is considering was undertaken at Aala Park on Oahu in the early 1990s.
“That situation became pretty dangerous,” Morishige explained. “It raised numerous health and safety concerns and eventually had to be shut down by law enforcement.”
Niimi said security and other services would be part of the temporary site plan, if it comes to fruition. He added that he’s fully aware of the risks, which are compounded by the primary homeless demographics living in the park, or at least frequenting it often.
Police and outreach workers noted Tuesday that roughly 30-40 individuals permanently reside in the park, adding the homeless presence swells to nearly 100 a few hours after sunrise.
Rick Ruchty, who participates in outreach as part of the Hawaii branch of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, said those numbers have increased steadily in recent years.
“There’s a transient component, but the number actually living there … has grown exponentially just in the last year,” Ruchty said. “There used to be small pup tents … now it’s the Taj Mahal.”
Experts agreed Tuesday that roughly 90 percent of homeless in the park suffer from substance abuse problems and around 75 percent deal with some variety of mental illness — making the park Kona’s primary hub for those demographics within the homeless population.
Individuals dealing with such issues are the hardest to control and may render a temporary campsite unsafe. Police at the meeting agreed that where crime within the homeless community is concerned, nearly every homeless individual frequenting the park ends up being a victim, a perpetrator or both.
Sgt. Roylen Valera of Kona’s Community Policing Division likened the task of policing these subgroups of homeless to “spinning wheels.”
“The question about inventory on beds is irrelevant at that point because they don’t even want to be housed,” Valera said of the specific segment of homeless. “A lot of them don’t care. They don’t want the help. They’re going to live there and exist there as long as we permit them to do so.”
Kona PD has recently intensified enforcement efforts, conducting beach sweeps from Hale Halawai to the park once weekly instead of once monthly. Officers use a law involving park hours to cite violators who frequent the area between 11 p.m.-6 a.m., when it is closed to all activity.
The citations are minor offenses, however, and create what Valera called a “revolving cycle.”
“They (end up) back down at Old A. in the same campsite they never really left,” he said. “They know this doesn’t have any bite.”
Despite the apparent futility of some efforts and a muddled path yet to traverse, Valera and Kamaka were both adamant something must be done sooner than later.
One possibility involves a “soft cleanup,” which would usher the homeless out for a period of days and incorporate trimming back the naupaka bushes to make for less cover, thereby discouraging homeless from returning to camp there.
In the meantime, Niimi said outreach efforts will continue to document homeless in the park who are eligible for rapid rehousing or other housing programs in an attempt to thin the herd before the county moves in.
“We’re not going to reach a situation we will be fully ready for,” Kim said. “We need to set a date and go forward, and we’ll handle the rest as best as we can.”