Notices of an ongoing homeless sweep at Maui’s Kahului Boat Harbor by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources lack the same information that was cited by the Hawaii Supreme Court in a challenge to Maui County’s homeless sweeps.
DLNR’s notices regarding sweeps of an encampment of 50 or so homeless people at the Kahului Boat Harbor have not provided information on where or how people can claim their seized property — or how they can challenge the taking of their property through a so-called contested case hearing.
Lisa Darcy, founder and director of the nonprofit organization Share Your Mana, said she has repeatedly asked DLNR for contested case hearings on behalf of the Kahului Boat Harbor occupants before and during DLNR sweeps but received no response.
The state Attorney General’s Office told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser on Monday that it has not received any requests for contested case hearings related to the sweeps.
Darcy said she asked DLNR for contested case hearings going back to a January homeless sweep at the harbor and again last week — just a month after the Hawai‘i Supreme Court wrote that the due process clauses of both the U.S. and Hawaii Constitutions required Maui County to hold a hearing before seizing — and immediately destroying — homeless property in September 2021.
The Hawai‘i Supreme Court found that Maui County ignored written contested case hearing requests from some occupants of a homeless encampment on Amala Place near Kanaha Pond and the Wailuku-Kahului Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The “Kanaha Sweep,” as the Supreme Court called it, grew out of similar concerns behind other homeless enforcement efforts across Hawai‘i.
“The Court acknowledges that Defendants (Maui County) may have important interests in public health, safety, and the maintenance of its public spaces, but on balance they do not outweigh the significant private interests at stake,” the court wrote.
The county argued that people “have no right to indefinitely store personal items on public land after receiving notice that the County intended to clear its property,” the court said.
But the court found that “these costs do not justify infringing the basic constitutional rights of homeless individuals.”
Following the court’s ruling in the Maui County sweep, Darcy said that state officials “have full knowledge” that their notices at Kahului Boat Harbor “are violating people’s civil rights for what the Hawai‘i Supreme Court has ruled an illegal and unconstitutional act. It’s just shocking.”
Help for Maui’s homeless has gotten worse since Lahaina’s Ka Hale a ke Ola homeless shelter was destroyed in the Aug. 8 wildfires, Darcy said.
On Friday, DLNR used a Taser on and arrested a 30-year-old homeless man during the second day of the harbor sweep.
Alonzo-Kealoha had an outstanding arrest warrant and also was charged with second-degree terroristic threatening and resisting arrest after he was seen “exhibiting disorderly conduct and committed numerous traffic violations over the past few days,” according to DLNR.
Alono-Kealoha also resisted arrest on the warrant and attempted to flee before an officer used a Taser to take him into custody.
DLNR said it had received “numerous” complaints about the encampment.
About 10 of the occupants of Kahului Boat Harbor also had been swept out of the Kanaha encampment without information on how they could claim their belongings and despite requests for contested case hearings, Darcy said.
Maui County had argued in the Kanaha sweep that “it did not need to conduct a contested case hearing because such a hearing was not required by administrative rule, by statute, or by constitutional due process,” according to the Supreme Court’s ruling.
But the court wrote that Hawai‘i’s Constitution states, “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. … The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution similarly states, ‘No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’”
“Today, we hold that unabandoned possessions of houseless persons constitute property protected by the due process clause of Article I, Section 5 of the Hawai‘i Constitution,” the court wrote.
The court’s decision upheld an earlier victory by the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai‘i on behalf of its plaintiffs in Maui’s 2nd Circuit Court, which Maui County then appealed to the Supreme Court.
ACLU officials Monday did not immediately respond to a request for comment on any concerns they might have over DLNR’s notifications of its sweep at Kahului Boat Harbor.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Maui County spokesperson Laksmi Melelani Abraham told the Star-Advertiser, “The County respects the decision of the Hawai‘i Supreme Court and the concerns that motivated it. The County does not plan to appeal the Court’s decision and rather will review its policies to ensure that they comply with the Court’s ruling and our obligations to protect the rights of all of Maui’s citizens.”
The ACLU’s victory against Maui County represents the latest favorable court ruling against policies in Western states toward clearing out encampments and other actions intended to address homelessness, including a ruling by a panel of the 9th Circuit against Grants Pass, Oregon, that it could not enforce local ordinances that made it illegal for homeless people to use a “blanket, pillow, or cardboard box for protection from the elements.”
The Grants Pass case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
