EDIT: Trouble in Paradise

In a 2001 episode of SpongeBob Squarepants, when the town of Bikini Bottom was threatened by the invasion of an Alaskan Bull worm, Patrick Star recommended the absurd solution of taking Bikini Bottom and pushing it somewhere else. Now in real life, Hawaii is considering taking its homeless people and pushing them somewhere else.

On Wednesday, the Honolulu City Council evaluated a number of proposals to remedy the issue of homeless citizens disturbing the tourists vacationing in Hawaii. Letters of complaints from tourists cite being disturbed by the homeless street-dwellers, who reportedly make it difficult to walk on the sidewalk. The City Council is looking to approve a ban on sitting, lying down, defecating and urinating in the tourist attractions of Waikiki and other public places, and also laid out plans to establish a dwelling for homeless people on a remote island far away from any tourist attractions.

“We are pushing to make it illegal to sleep on the sidewalks of Waikiki, because we’ve heard from our hotel industry that it’s very concerned about keeping Waikiki as an attractive visitor destination,” said Jesse Broder Van Dyke, spokesman for Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, to the Associated Press.

In a state as scenic as Hawaii that profits largely from tourism, it is understandable they would want to keep vacationers as happy as possible. Let’s face it, homeless people aren’t exactly enhancing the relaxing island vibe indicative of the Hawaiian Islands. Furthermore, if the state had to ban public defecation and urination, some people were obviously making the streets look worse in a more active way than simply sleeping on them. Homeless people may add to the urban vibe of cities such as Boston and New York, but people in general tend to be judgmental of a city that can’t house all of its residents. And in terms of tourism, anything detracting from a vacationer’s experience translates directly to less tourism profits in the future.

But Hawaii is not just a vacation destination. It is a state, and thus serves as a home to many people, including its residents who don’t have homes. This is where we get to the more controversial portion of Hawaii’s plan, the proposition to move approximately 4,700 homeless people to Sand Island.

Sand Island, you can guess, probably doesn’t look quite like Waikiki. Formerly the site of a World War II Japanese internment camp, Sand Island has also hosted a wastewater treatment plant as well as a dump. Known as the “Housing First Transition Center,” the plan is for Sand Island to serve as temporary home-for-the-homeless for one to three years until Hawaii completes its “Housing First” complexes, which would provide shelter to the chronically homeless throughout Oahu.

If Hawaii ultimately plans to provide permanent housing for its homeless community, we can agree that is an admirable undertaking for the state. However, the state’s motives for developing these provisions seem to lie more in keeping their tourism industry afloat than they do in actually helping its residents. It’s nice that they want to give homeless people some kind of residence, but doing so on a remote island camp when they are accustomed to the beauty of the scenic state they call home is incredibly dehumanizing to the value of these peoples’ lives. And even if they provide a temporary home, one can only imagine the quality of a former dump’s facilities. Hint: not great.

Let’s say Hawaii is truly looking to help their homeless community. Perhaps it may be more ethical to treat them more like the humans they are. More human solutions could include providing job counseling and clothing that would give them the potential to get hired for jobs, rather than moving them to the middle of nowhere, where there are likely few job opportunities. Although there is certainly going to be a proportion of people who abuse these resources, this assistance could make miracles for the homeless who are genuinely down on their luck in a difficult economy.

It’s nice that Hawaii wants to reduce its homelessness rate, but in reality, it sounds like they are more concerned with ensuring that its tourists have more space to guzzle their piña coladas sans disturbance.