(AP) – Maui County Council members are working on a bill to establish procedures for sweeps of homeless people to ensure their rights are protected after a Hawaii Supreme Court ruling against the county.

“We have to treat these folks with dignity. We cannot put trauma upon trauma to some of these folks,” Council Member Gabe Johnson said at a Water Authority, Social Services and Parks Committee meeting last week.

The intent of Bill 111 is to “provide the procedures to compassionately relocate people when necessary, including offering access to services and storage of personal property,” said committee chair Shane Sinenci. “Government cannot search and seize your personal property.”

Johnson, who introduced the bill, said part of the impetus was the Supreme Court ruling this year in the case of Sonia Davis v. (Mayor) Richard Bissen.

“We don’t want to be getting sued if we keep doing it this way,” Johnson said.

In September 2021, Maui County, then under the administration of Mayor Michael Victorino, conducted a sweep on a large encampment along Amala Place in Kahului. After receiving notices to vacate beginning several weeks prior to the sweep, about 10 of an estimated 80 people living there decided to remain.

County employees and contractors removed 54 vehicles — which were stored and then disposed of — plus 58 tons of trash along with personal property over a two-day operation assisted by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. The personal property was destroyed without going through a storage process, according to court documents.

The ACLU of Hawaii filed a lawsuit, calling the county’s actions unconstitutional.

On March 5, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that “unabandoned possessions of houseless persons constitute property and were protected by Hawaii’s due process clause.” Maui County had “violated procedural due process rights of houseless individuals by not providing adequate notice” or a contested case hearing for possessions seized in the sweep, according to the court report.

Bill 111 would define the roles of county agencies and outreach providers during encampment removal procedures, set requirements for notices to the homeless and outreach providers, establish how personal property will be stored, how and when people will have access to it, identify or provide alternative shelters before a sweep, and set cleanup procedures. It also states the council must put money into the budget to implement the law.

The proposal is receiving mixed reviews from service providers who work with Maui’s homeless population, some of whom testified at the committee meeting. While saying establishing procedures for sweeps may ensure the homeless population will be treated with more dignity, some service providers believe there should be no sweeps at all.

Mo‘i Kawaakoa, who started a program called Holomua Outreach last year, thanked Johnson for bringing the issue to the table and working to improve how the homeless are treated during and after sweeps.

But she said the county should stop the sweeps altogether and let people shelter where they want to.

“We lost two people on Holomua Road,” Kawaakoa said of a homeless encampment in Paia between Hana Highway and the old Maui High School. One had been moved out of Lahaina in a sweep and went to the Holomua Road area, where she died, Kawaakao said. The other went through traumatic experiences from two previous encampments and “chose to die on Holomua Road versus going to the hospital to get treated,” she said

“So, please think about how to improve these policies so we do not continue to lose our people,” Kawaakoa said.

Jordan Hocker, community outreach educator at Maui Housing Hui, said she acted as a legal observer for the National Lawyers Guild during the September 2021 sweep at Amala Place.

“The only good thing that came out of that was an assertion of the rights of unsheltered people through the Hawaii Supreme Court,” Hocker said.

Maui’s housing crisis combined with the high cost of living is driving homelessness on the island, she said, adding that “to continue business as usual is, quite frankly, unethical.”

Hocker questioned the amount of taxpayer money that goes into sweeps, both in litigation and in repeating the process.

She also said research shows substance abuse does not drive homelessness; it’s the other way around.

“When you have no resources and nowhere to go, meaning your basic human need and right for shelter isn’t provided, substance abuse is something that happens as a coping mechanism. It is maladaptive and it ruins people, and we see that on our streets,” she said.

Every person living on the streets, “with almost 100% certainty,” would test positive for post-traumatic stress disorder, Hocker said. PTSD and substance abuse are considered disabilities, she said, which would categorize much of the island’s homeless population as having a disability.

“When we treat people like they’re garbage, we treat disabled people like they’re garbage,” she said.

A paper published by the National Library of Medicine states the relationship between substance abuse and homelessness is complex, with studies suggesting substance use can be both a cause and a consequence of homelessness.

The National Coalition for the Homeless published a study in 2017 finding homeless people often turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with their situations. Additionally, they may see it as necessary to become accepted in the homeless community.

The last time Nicole Huguenin had testified before the council was in December 2020, on a bill establishing fines from $100 to $400 for people giving money, goods or food to the homeless without a simultaneous effort from outreach services. Amid public outcry — and the proposal’s potential unconstitutionality — the council tabled the bill.

As the executive director of Maui Rapid Response, a disaster-response team of nonprofit organizations and community members, Huguenin said she and her team do not support sweeps or relocations. They are short-term oriented, punitive and not viable economically, she said. This position, she added, is also backed by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the National Poverty Law Center and the ACLU.

“I really hope we look at the cost of every sweep,” Huguenin said.

During a sweep at Wahikuli Park in Lahaina last July, she said, county staff relied heavily on outreach workers’ relationships and harm-reduction training to communicate with people living at the park and de-escalate two tense situations that ultimately resulted in the arrest of two homeless people.

The committee worked on Bill 111 for the first time last week. Sinenci said at the beginning of the meeting his plan was to hear testimony and eventually include amendments. There was a significant amount of testimony.

The committee approved some changes proposed by the administration and deferred more significant amendments to discuss further at the next meeting.

According to the last point-in-time count conducted by the nonprofit organization Bridging the Gap, there were 654 homeless people on Maui in January, with 369 of them sheltered and 285 unsheltered.

The majority of Maui’s homeless population, 443 of them, were on Central Maui, with 97 of them unsheltered. Lahaina had the second-highest population, with 82, but none were unsheltered. Upcountry had 54, with 23 of them unsheltered. Kihei had 45, and none unsheltered. Lower Waiehu had 30, and none unsheltered. Hana had no listed homeless.

Bridging the Gap conducts point-in-time homeless counts in the counties of Maui, Kauai and Hawaii on one night each January.

Maui’s homeless population has been on a steady decline since 2016, when it reached 1,144 people. In 2023, Bridging the Gap’s point-in-time survey counted 704 homeless on Maui.

On Kauai, the numbers have been steadily increasing since 2020, when 424 individuals were counted in the survey. This year, Kauai’s homeless count was 523. On Hawaii island, the homeless population had been climbing from 2018 to 2023, when it reached 1,003 individuals, but it declined this year to 718.

 

Story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.