Overnight aloha ambassador Antonio “Tiny” Payton knocked on the door of the public bathrooms at Kuhio Beach Park in Waikiki at midnight, opened the door a crack and shone a flashlight into the restroom.
“Aloha, the beach park closing,” Payton said during his shift that began late Thursday night.
A few moments later a homeless woman with a backpack emerged and headed away from a relatively empty Kuhio Beach.
The restrooms and beaches used to be filled with overnight sleepers and late-night visitors but the numbers have come down considerably since this past summer, when the city Department of Parks and Recreation began closing Kuhio Beach two hours earlier.
“If it’s tourists or locals or homeless, we greet them with respect,” Payton said. “I notice using the word ‘aloha’ first off, it lightens them, it puts a glow on their face so that ‘aloha’ softens the blow of letting them know that the beach is now closed from midnight to 5 a.m. from the shoreline all the way to the sidewalk including the beaches, the benches and the park area.”
The expanded beach closure hours augment Safe &Sound Waikiki, a crime reduction and human services program that began in September 2022, coinciding with the start of the Waikiki Business Improvement District’s overnight ambassador program that assigns two safety “ambassadors” and a human services outreach coordinator to an overnight patrol to uphold park rules, guiding individuals toward safer behaviors and resources.
“Through proactive encounters, the team assists tourists with safety reminders and supports vulnerable individuals seeking services,” said Trevor Abarzua, WBID president and executive director. “This creates a welcoming environment that balances safety, compassion and community support.”
Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Steve Alm said the overnight ambassadors complement Safe &Sound Waikiki, which is patterned after Weed &Seed, a multiagency strategy to control and prevent violent crime, drug trafficking and drug-related crime in targeted neighborhoods. Safe &Sound aims to make Waikiki safe by reducing crime, and sound through social service partnerships that serve the community.
Abarzua said the overnight ambassadors program, which uses paid staff, has helped to reduce the count of homeless people sleeping outdoors in Waikiki from 213 to 183, a 27 percent reduction from the start of Safe &Sound Waikiki some two years ago, and a 14 percent reduction since June when the overnight ambassador team began supplementing WBID’s Safe &Sound partnerships with the Institute for Human Services, the Honolulu Police Department and the city’s Department of the Prosecuting Attorney.
Alm said the first focus for Safe &Sound was to reduce crime by getting habitual offenders off the street and urging tougher sentencing for those using Waikiki to commit crimes of opportunity, including geographic restrictions when appropriate.
According to Alm, over the past two years, reports of robbery dropped 19 percent, while burglary reports fell 30 percent, auto theft declined 21 percent and vehicle break-ins decreased 38 percent.
“We did see disorderly conduct reports increase by 17 percent, but I think that’s OK because that means police are arresting troublemakers and being very proactive,” he said. “I’m really pleased with Safe &Sound Waikiki results. It just shows the collaborative efforts of everyone are working.”
Police Maj. Bradon Ogata, commander of District 6, which includes the tourism hub, said in an email that HPD is working with WBID and other partners to proactively address concerns at an early stage, including holding criminal offenders accountable for their actions.
Ogata said the aloha ambassadors have proven very helpful.
“They assist the public by answering questions on a wide range of topics, including basic safety tips, park rules and bicycle laws,” he said. “Aloha ambassadors assist the police by acting as witnesses and extra observers out in the community. Their presence is definitely an asset to Waikiki.”
Expansion sought
Since June, WBID’s overnight team, which consists of two safety ambassadors and an outreach ambassador, has been patrolling from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. daily to provide an extra layer of security at Kuhio Beach Park and along Kalakaua Avenue.
Abarzua said that during the team’s first quarter, which ended in October, the team conducted 115 interactions with homeless individuals in Waikiki, connecting 25 of them to case managers. Some 21 homeless individuals were transitioned to long-term or short-term shelter, and five others to respite or stabilization centers.
According to Abarzua, the new overnight ambassador program was funded with a $200,000 grant from Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s office and supplements the work of Katie Kaahanui, executive coordinator for Safe &Sound Waikiki, as well as the outreach and street medicine work that WBID pays IHS $115,000 to do in the district.
These initiatives are paying off, he said.
The current level of unsheltered homelessness in Waikiki, Abarzua said, is the lowest the University of Hawaii and Karl Kim, a professor in the UH Department of Urban and Regional Planning, have noted in the past 18 years they have partnered with WBID to track and analyze homeless patterns within Waikiki. But he added that more needs to be done.
“We are very proud of the results, but there are still 183 people sleeping outside in Waikiki,” Abarzua said. “They are part of our community too.”
He said WBID is pursuing additional grants and funding to expand the number of overnight ambassadors and the area they cover. He would like to add overnight ambassadors to Kuhio Avenue and seek partnerships with Waikiki’s business owners to expand jurisdiction onto private property. Abarzua said private businesses without overnight security are more likely to struggle with after-hours occupation by homeless individuals.
Changing lives
Joshua Lewis, who was working a shift as an overnight safety ambassador Thursday, said more than 80 percent of the homeless individuals the team encounters in Waikiki refuse services, often because they have a mental illness or other challenges.
“If they are a little off, we will feel them out. Sometimes they can be acting, but if we can see that there is really a problem we will get the Honolulu Police Department involved, or if they seem really helpless, we’ll try to get Emergency Medical Services here first,” he said.
Christopher Aki, who was working as an overnight outreach ambassador Thursday, said the team will collect data on those who need assistance but aren’t an immediate threat to themselves or others. The information is passed on the next morning to an on-staff outreach counselor who will try to set up a meeting with them.
Abarzua said WBID also hopes to increase its partnerships to include more doctors to provide “street medicine” and attorneys to help support “assisted community treatment” petitions for court-ordered treatment.
Since November 2023, street doctors working with IHS have administered antipsychotic medication shots to more than 50 homeless individuals in Waikiki, he said. Sometimes individuals who have built a rapport with outreach workers will consent to medical treatment, but others will need court urging, which has yielded positive results, according to Abarzua.
“We recently received a picture of one man that was treated through (assisted community treatment). He was all cleaned up and going to a job interview,” he said. “We’ve had some amazing results that have changed lives.”
Treatment often needed
Such successes are especially rewarding for overnight ambassadors like Jason Martin, who was once homeless himself and now supervises an overnight crew.
“I’ve been there. I know the challenges that homelessness brings. As long as I can connect them with our daytime outreach and they are willing to put in the work, outcomes are usually positive,” Martin said in a video statement.
Abarzua said the team recently was able to help a newly widowed woman in her 60s, who became homeless in Kuhio Beach Park after she ran out of money after flying to Honolulu from the mainland on a whim following the death of her husband.
“She wanted to be here because they had honeymooned here 30 years ago. But she arrived without making a hotel reservation and only had $100,” he said. “She was on the beach and she was sad and in need of assistance. Our team was able connect her to outreach and help her get back to her daughter.”
Alm said from the start, Safe &Sound Waikiki organizers knew that services for homeless people as well as those contending with mental health and addiction challenges needed priority. His department is supporting a jail diversion program that tries to divert the seriously mentally ill from the criminal justice system.
“This is mostly for misdemeanors and petty misdemeanors, because this is often how people who are seriously mentally ill end up getting in trouble with law enforcement,” Alm said. “They urinate in public, they may be striking out at people.”
He added that he also has expanded the Substance Use Disorder Assessment-Fast, or SUDA-Fast, program into Waikiki. The program works to get people who are homeless and get arrested for drug possession quickly assessed and into treatment before they are sentenced to probation.
“People who are chronically homeless, almost all of them have drug or alcohol or mental health problems,” he said. “In order for them to get off the street and stay off the street, they really need to get into treatment.”
