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Two weeks have passed since Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s release of plans to transform a Sand Island property into an inventively Spartan transitional housing site for up to 100 homeless individuals. In the intervening time, more has become clear about the “Hale Mauliola” development — named for the Hawaiian goddess of well-being and health — and how community leaders feel about it.

As Civil Beat’s Rui Kaneya reported Monday, city planners will use 25 modified modular shipping containers at the site as temporary housing structures — at a construction cost of $500,000 along with common areas — rather than simply allowing a village of tents. The 8- by 20-foot steel units would each provide three to four basic living spaces for chronically homeless residents for up to 60 days, though city officials say the time limit would be flexible and used more as a guide.

While the plan borrows from a Eugene, Ore., development called “Opportunity Village,” there are key differences. Opportunity Village operates on a self-governance model, with residents performing such duties as cleaning the shared bathrooms and staffing security teams. At Hale Mauliola, security will be provided by the city, as will day-to-day management services of the site, with residents having little say in how the development is run.

The plan has drawn mixed responses from City Council members — Councilman Joey Manahan, whose district includes Sand Island, reportedly called it part of the mayor’s “piecemeal approach” to homelessness that he can’t support — and from homeless advocates. Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice staff attorney Jenny Lee worries that Hale Mauliola might function like any other emergency shelter and go unused by those who need it most.

We don’t discount these and other concerns. The most prominent is that siting the development on Sand Island, far from places where they might seek work, could present challenges difficult for Hale Mauliola’s temporary residents to overcome.

But the inescapable fact is that Hale Mauliola doesn’t have to work for all of Honolulu’s homeless people. At capacity, it could house only about 2 percent of the city’s estimated 4,900 homeless. At any given time, there may well be at least 100 people for whom the site’s location, shelter structures and services would be appropriate, getting them off the crowded sidewalks of Kakaako, away from the Kapalama Canal and in contact with assistance that can make a difference in their lives.

Caldwell says Hale Mauliola is part of the city’s “scattered site” approach to temporary homeless shelter and that more locations are on the way. In fact, the city has also issued a request for proposals to build three 500-square-foot homes in Waianae. As we’ve said repeatedly with regard to both temporary shelters and affordable housing plans for Honolulu, progress can’t come quickly enough.

Against the backdrop of the Sand Island announcement last week came findings from a survey undertaken by two University of Hawaii graduate students, indicating city ordinances intended to get the homeless off sidewalks and into shelters may be having exactly the opposite effect.

The research project was small, involving 70 homeless individuals living in the Aala Park, Kakaako and Kapalama Canal areas. But it found that for those individuals, getting caught up in the city’s controversial “sit-lie” ban, which outlaws sitting or lying on the sidewalk in certain city business districts, made it less likely for about one-third that they’d go to a temporary homeless shelter. Another 61 percent said sit-lie citations would have no effect on their decision to seek out a shelter.

Rather than accomplishing the city’s goal of encouraging homeless individuals to seek services and shelter, sit-lie and related city ordinances appear to be more likely to cause “economic and property loss” and “physical and psychological harm,” the study’s authors conclude.

“The overwhelmingly harmful effects of current city sweeps and sit-lie policies on vulnerable houseless individuals and families in Hawaii are a travesty of justice,” wrote Tai Dunson-Strane and Sarah Soakai, graduate students in Urban and Regional Planning. “The problem of houselessness will not be solved through punitive policies that increase harm to this population.”

We agree, and have consistently opposed the sit-lie ban, particularly in light of the fact that even the modest Hale Mauliola project is months away from being ready to take in its first residents. Without temporary shelter, sit-lie enforcement only moves homeless offenders from one neighborhood sidewalk to another and does little, if anything, to actually reduce homelessness in Honolulu.

Despite that, the council last week disregarded city attorneys’ advice on its sit-lie expansion and overrode Caldwell’s recent veto and is now poised to expand enforcement beyond the Waikiki, Chinatown, Kaneohe and Kailua business districts and into the McCully, Aala, Punchbowl and Kapalama Canal areas.

The irony is deep, given that council members urged Caldwell to bring temporary shelter space online before they passed the first sit-lie measure last fall, but now are committed to widely expanding the ban. In so doing, they’re merely pandering to beleaguered business leaders who are weary of dealing with the challenges caused by homeless people in their areas, but are doing nothing to address the underlying problem.

Hale Mauliola isn’t a complete or perfect solution, and we wish there were a half-dozen other sites ready to be brought online, but it at least represents progress.