Mike Molaka rustled through a plastic bin on the sidewalk between King Street and Stadium Park on Monday night. He shut the bin’s lid and stacked it on top of the others he had neatly laid near the street.
“I got to get out of here,” he said, explaining he had laundry to do. “Sorry, you caught me in a rush.”
A few moments later, he sped off on his bike.
City workers on Tuesday night are expected to clear away any remaining things from the sidewalk and power wash it. The cleaning is the latest sweep to nudge the homeless away from a life on the streets.
On Monday night, the roughly 20 homeless living at Stadium Park planned their next moves. From shelter-hopping to cramming in with relatives for a few days, each person had a different idea on where to go next.
Their answers shed light on the array of options — or lack thereof — available to people living on Honolulu’s streets.
Molaka said he planned to store his things at a friend’s house. As he biked away, he told a friend he would stay with his daughter in Waipahu.
A 41-year-old man who gave his name only as Gerry said he would stay at a friend’s house until the city sweep had finished. He said he would miss the park.
“I like it here because of lot of people will support us,” he said. Passersby often gave food and clothes to those living at the park, he said.
But not every Stadium Park resident who spoke with Civil Beat said they planned to turn to family or friends.
John Lanoza, 47, said he might head to Kakaako Park, where H-5 has turned buses into homeless shelters. Then again, he said, he might try to get into public housing in Waipahu.
And while urban Honolulu shelters say they can fit those displaced from the park, few other homeless said they planned to head indoors.
When Travis Wood, 38, got out of Oahu Community Correctional Center, he tried a stint at the Institute for Human Services emergency shelter.
But he said the shelter reminded him of jail. He’s lived on the street since May, he said.
Roxann Dunn, 29, said she’s lived in a shelter before and didn’t like it.
She said she plans to wait for city workers to arrive on Tuesday. She wants to give them a piece of her mind, she said.
“Who gets the rights to say (homeless) can’t be here?” she said, adding that she thinks the public is trying to ignore homelessness. “They want to shove it under the rug and pretend like it doesn’t exist.”
Wood, who lives in a lone tent pitched on the sidewalk across King Street from the park, struck a different tone. Homeless had no right to live on sidewalks.
“How can you feel obligated to have a space when you don’t pay taxes on it?” he said.
As he took stock of the bicycle parts, alligator clips and other things he calls his own, he wouldn’t say where he would head next.
Dunn questioned whether the city’s sweeps would accomplish anything.
“Three weeks from now, someone else will be here,” she said.
GET IN-DEPTH REPORTING ON HAWAII’S BIGGEST ISSUES
Support Independent, Unbiased News
Civil Beat is a nonprofit, reader-supported newsroom based in ±á²¹·É²¹¾±Ê»¾±. When you give, your donation is combined with gifts from thousands of your fellow readers, and together you help power the strongest team of investigative journalists in the state.