Hawaii County agencies, the police department and business associations all seem to be waiting for one another to propose solutions to alleviate complaints about the homeless on Hawaii Island.
During a recent County Council committee hearing, Hawaii County Parks and Recreation Director Maurice Messina made a presentation about how his department is managing homeless people in county parks. His conclusion was that after adding security at 13 sites islandwide, the number of incidents relating to people misusing parks has gone down, but the long-term solution remains elusive.
“I spend every single day going through accident reports, vandalism reports, theft reports, police reports, islandwide,” Messina said. “We have cut down on that quite a bit with the security.
“But it didn’t get turned around without a cost,” Messina went on, saying the additional security alone costs about $2.5 million, while the amount of work needed to keep park facilities usable after all the aforementioned accident and vandalism reports is staggering — he estimated that 25% to 30% of park caretakers’ work is strictly cleaning up after the homeless.
Messina presented a slideshow of common scenes in park facilities every day: used syringes, piles of human feces, graffiti, destroyed bathrooms, fires and even an entire tree-house built into a banyan tree. Each of these, he said, are addressed and corrected by department employees, but addressing the root cause of those problems is more difficult — although he noted that some cases of vandalism are not caused by homeless individuals.
Police Sgt. Mike Hardie with the Kona Community Policing Division said police don’t conduct “sweeps” where officers force homeless people to move on or face arrest — that would be illegal, he said. Rather, police conduct outreach and try to connect homeless people with help they might need.
“But the truth is, there’s nowhere for them to go,” Hardie said. “And everyone’s aware of it.”
The problem is acutely felt in downtown Hilo. Police Lt. William Derr, a Hilo patrol officer, said complaints from businesses and residents relating to homeless issues have remained constant over the years despite outreach efforts from the county.
“In those cases where there’s a criminal violation, that can lead to a criminal charge,” Derr said. “But a lot of times, all we can do is let them know about the complaint, and then we leave. Usually, we’ll try to correct a problem if it’s there, but we can’t just arrest people for being on the sidewalk.”
Sharla Sayre, president of the Hilo Downtown Improvement Association, said she felt that the number of homeless people downtown has increased, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, although she added that complaints regarding the homeless population have decreased.
“What happens is, usually, we’ll meet with the county, they’ll address it somehow, and then it falls by the wayside,” Sayre said. “There might be great solutions that get set up, but then they’re dropped because of a lack of manpower or lack of funding.”
Before the pandemic, the DIA conducted “Aloha Patrols,” wherein DIA volunteers and police officers would ask homeless people downtown to move in the mornings while the county cleaned the sidewalks, but Sayre said that without volunteers, the program has been shuttered.
With steady county funding, Sayre said consistent security and cleaning could substantially improve downtown, but for now those funds are simply not present.
Jonathan Humphries, a downtown business owner and member of a steering committee for a proposed Downtown Hilo Business Improvement District, said that although the homeless population is a fact of life downtown, they aren’t necessarily problematic.
“In my girlfriend’s case — she owns Amigos Taqueria — sometimes it’s a problem, and sometimes it’s not,” Humphries said. “Sometimes it’s just somebody who comes in to see a show, and that’s fine. If they cause a problem, then we’ll ask them to leave.”
But, Humphries added, situations involving homeless individuals can become volatile. One man, Jordan Cacatian, was arrested at Amigos for causing a disturbance in August. A few days later and only one block away, Cacatian approached a police officer while brandishing a knife, leading the officer to shoot him in the leg.
Humphries said the proposed business improvement district would focus on beautifying downtown, which would involve addressing the homeless population. But, like most of the planned services of the BID, this would be an augmentation of existing county services, not a new solution.
“We’d set aside a certain amount of funding per year for homelessness, and that would allow us to hire outreach coordinators,” Humphries said. “It depends on the person — there’s not one single fix for every homeless person.”
Humphries added that a business improvement district in Kona has nearly 24/7 security, which he said has helped reduce complaints.
Meanwhile, Derr urged empathy and forbearance from residents and business owners.
“Not a lot of the disturbances we get calls about are anything other than people don’t like to see it,” Derr said. “People see a homeless person, and it weighs on their conscience. It makes them feel bad, and they want to make it go away, and the people they call to do that is the police.”
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
