Council panel supports homeless ‘safe zones’

Honolulu City Council members continue to grapple with Oʻahu’s homelessness problem, advancing a resolution to create “safe zones” but deferring a bill that would have expanded the city’s so-called sit-lie ban across the entire island.

Council Chairman Ron Menor called Bill 87, the proposal to expand sit-lie, “overly broad” and at “significant risk” of being struck down in court, before he and the six other members at Thursday’s Executive Matters and Legal Affairs meeting deferred the measure.

The city’s corporation counsel expressed its own concerns about the bill, Menor added, after those Council members emerged from an executive session.

Some testifiers, such as social worker Akua Campanella and Will Caron of Young Progressives Demanding Action, argued against the sit-lie ban Thursday, saying it does not address the root causes of homelessness on Oʻahu.