Georgette Preston and Jared Castro know the drill after living in a Honolulu park for the past four years.

They sleep in their tent with their possessions on the sidewalk, then move it all into the Moiliili Neighborhood Park for the day in a bid to adhere to a city rule that people can’t be in the parks between 10 p.m and 5 a.m.

But still city maintenance crews and police swept the area on Tuesday, detaining the homeless couple for violating park rules and seizing their belongings. Preston’s sister arrived just in time to grab her wheelchair because she’s been unable to walk for nearly a year.

To make matters worse, it rained as the crews hauled away tarps, suitcases, bedding, clothing, chairs, a table, a solar panel, coolers, tool boxes, carts, hand trucks, dishes, a washing machine and more. The items, which filled up two trucks, were listed on a handwritten receipt that read like an invoice from a moving company.

Preston and Castro were released after a few hours, but the effort to get most of their belongings back is likely to take weeks, as it has in the past, they said.

Homeless people have long complained about losing important belongings – including IDs, birth certificates, social security cards and work documents — during actions aimed at clearing city parks and sidewalks in what Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration calls “sanitation activities.”

On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii issued a report calling on officials to stop enforcing laws that “criminalize homelessness” and instead to prioritize community building, security, cultural changes and more affordable housing.

The ACLU also recommended creating a mobile crisis response that would be autonomous from the police to help cope with the growing homelessness problem.

According to the report, Honolulu conducted 1,634 homeless sweeps, averaging more than five sweeps a day, from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020. The ACLU estimated that “the sweeps alone cost $5 million per year.”

It noted that one of the purported goals of the sweeps is to encourage houseless people to use shelters where they can receive services. The report was based on interviews with government officials, service providers and homeless people, as well as reviews of all county budgets from the past three years.

“However, sweeps are devastating for residents whose belongings are seized or destroyed, having negative economic, physical, psychological impacts that can actually prevent individuals from securing housing,” the report said.

Blangiardi campaigned on a promise to end homeless sweeps that drew criticism during his predecessor Kirk Caldwell’s administration. But critics say the city has only rebranded the sweeps as it continues to post enforcement schedules every day and to send crews to uproot the homeless encampments. 

Under Honolulu’s stored property ordinance, homeless people have 45 days to retrieve the items before they’re thrown away, recycled, donated or sold. Honolulu is the only county that has this law after a court-sanctioned agreement in 2015 that prevents the city from immediately disposing of homeless peoples’ property.

But authorities don’t make it easy, advocates say. Homeless people must call the Department of Facility and Maintenance to schedule a day and time to pick up the seized property, which is all stored at the Halawa Corporation Yard in an industrial area in central Oahu.

The warehouse is only open for pickup every Friday. The city charges a $200 fee for impounded property, but homeless people may apply for that to be waived.

Wookie Kim, legal director of the ACLU of Hawaii, said the storage unit is too hard to reach and homeless people should be allowed to keep belongings that are needed to survive on the streets until they can eventually transition into permanent housing.

“The fact that it’s so challenging and difficult is an indicator that the system is intended as punishment,” Kim said.

Blangiardi’s office did not respond to requests for comment about the retrieval process.

Housing Director Anton Krucky has said in the past that city officials adhere to stored property and sidewalk nuisance ordinances by allowing people 30 minutes to gather their items. He also said most individuals are notified the day before the cleaning occurs and noted that they get a receipt allowing them to claim their items.

The storage and disposal notices are posted on the city’s website and range from a single backpack to multiple items as in Preston and Castro’s case.

The yellow notices have spaces for signatures by the “property owner” and the city employee, but many are empty or illegible.

So far this year, the city has issued 355 impoundment notices, and only 18 individuals retrieved their property, according to data from the Department of Facility and Maintenance.

Last year, 555 impoundment notices were issued and only 53 people got their belongings back.

This is a familiar process for Preston and Castro. They said that they’ve been to Halawa at least five times within two years, most recently in early August.

When they got there, Castro said they had to wait in the parking lot while the maintenance crew brings their property up from a warehouse.

This time around, they’re living in a borrowed tent until they can save enough money to rent a U-Haul to retrieve their property from the Halawa facility, which is more than nine miles away from the park.

“It’s disheartening,” Preston said, adding that the biggest loss was a dirt bike she had planned to give her grandson for his birthday.

Some Moiliili residents have complained about the homeless encampment at the park and urged authorities to increase enforcement of the sit-lie rules.

Homelessness is a statewide problem, but the other islands lack laws preventing authorities from throwing away items.

A recent “clean-up” of an encampment in Maui has prompted a lawsuit on behalf of four homeless people. The lawsuit, filed on Oct. 20 in Second Circuit Court by the ACLU of Hawaii, requested an order requiring the county to comply with the 4th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and protect personal property and due process rights.

Lindsay Pacheco has made the transition from homelessness to being housed and now works with another nonprofit organization, Hui Aloha, to provide outreach service through a network of volunteers. 

She’s familiar with the process of witnessing belongings stripped away. 

“To us, once it’s taken, it’s taken,” she said. “We’re never seeing it again. Starting from zero with just the clothes on your back and whatever belongings you have in your backpack is not the easiest.”

Part of Pacheco’s job is to help homeless people get documents needed to apply for housing and other resources — a task that’s more difficult for nonresidents.

“It’s a headache, and it’s a lot of research on our part,” Pacheco said.

Curtis Love, who has been homeless for more than four years, is down to a cart full of clothes, a juice carton, a tent, a mat and a blanket. 

He currently lives off of his social security, but said it’s still not enough to get housing.

About three months ago, the city took his belongings for a third time. Love didn’t bother to make the trip to the Halawa facility again.

“Most guys on the streets just give up,” Love said. “If it (the storage unit) was close by, maybe.”

Preston recalled the most precious items that she lost during a sweep four years ago – photos of her father and a necklace containing his ashes.

“I tell everybody don’t get attached to their things because you only possess them for a moment,” Preston said. “If you really, really love something, don’t keep it here.”

The post Why It’s So Hard For Homeless People To Collect Seized Belongings On Oahu appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

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This article was originally published on Military.com Dec. 6, 2021. Follow Military.com on Twitter.

Cook 3rd Class Doris Miller is an American hero, the first Black sailor to earn the Navy Cross.

On Dec. 7, 1941, under fire, he helped move the mortally wounded commander of the battleship West Virginia to safety and then manned a machine gun — a weapon he was barred from training with because of his race — to fire at attacking aircraft.

A sign at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial visitors center says Miller died on the USS Liscombe Bay in 1944 at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

Miller actually died the year before, 1943, on the USS Liscome Bay, at the Battle of Makin Island.

The error about an icon for the civil rights movement, whose name will adorn a future Ford-class aircraft carrier, is one of several at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial that simply drive historians and history buffs nuts.

At least one is working to get them fixed.

“I’ve been tilting at this windmill since 2013,” said former Navy aviator and retired Capt. Charlie Gillman. “How many thousands of people have to see these things and they’re wrong?”

In addition to the Miller blunder, there are mistakes in photos: a 1941 photo of a Navy PBY Catalina aircraft that is dated as being from 1943 and a photo of the Japanese carrier Shokaku from the Battle of Santa Cruz in 1942 that is mislabeled as the Akagi, taken on Dec. 7, 1941.

Some photos are missing captions; others are incorrectly labeled or don’t properly illustrate the display. And the USS Arizona’’ memorial wall contains five names that don’t have ranks or rates.

“What does it take to get these guys to fix these things?” Gillman asked during an interview with Military.com. “If they asked for money, perhaps they think they’re putting themselves on report for screwing this up in the first place at taxpayer expense.”

The distinctive USS Arizona Memorial opened to visitors in 1962. Twenty years later, the visitors center at Pearl Harbor, managed by the National Park Service, opened. But the current errors were introduced in renovations that took place between 2008 and 2010, according to Gillman and historians who have visited the park.

Mike Wenger, who has written a series of books about the attack on Pearl Harbor for the Naval Institute Press, says mistakes can happen for a number of reasons, the first being that the subject matter is extremely complex.

“The documents and photography in the archives, many of them do not have a proper context. And you have to know a lot about the event in order to be able to properly interpret them,” Wenger told Military.com.

Sometimes, there’s too much information, he added, making it difficult to verify “tiny bits of information.”

And finally, many parks and museums simply don’t have military historians on staff who can oversee every detail of the displays and collections.

“A lot of these decisions — selection of material and interpretation of material — is sometimes done by committee … and it seldom works,” Wenger said.

Emily Pruett, the public affairs officer for the Pearl Harbor National Memorial, said the National Park Service is aware of the issues, and Superintendent Tom Leatherman, who took over in October, has every intention to “address the errors.”

She added that Leatherman met with Gillman on Nov. 5 and plans to research the items he has identified as problematic and make corrections as needed.

However, she said, the park service does not “have a finalized timeline or cost estimate for the updates at this time.”

The park has had its share of issues. It has suffered from high turnover at the superintendent level, with four acting superintendents since 2020.

In 2018, the National Park Service shut down the USS Arizona Memorial for a major renovation to stabilize the monument’s dock system and improve the infrastructure — a $2.1 million renovation that was completed in 2019.

Gillman believes the musical chairs and lack of funding have left it woefully neglected.

He has written to his congressional representatives and the secretary of the Interior to get the errors fixed. He has lobbied every park superintendent and is hoping Leatherman will be the man to make the changes.

He also has set his sights on a larger effort — to get more money allotted to the park.

Gillman would like to see the interpretive spaces at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial expanded to accommodate a National Park Service warehouse full of artifacts and materials that aren’t available for public view.

The expansion would not require any new construction, he argues, because the park service was given ownership a decade ago of a series of buildings on Ford Island, the Chief Petty Officers Bungalows, located not far from the memorials to the battleships Oklahoma and Utah.

The 100-year-old homes look over Battleship Row, “where sailors and Marines swam ashore through flaming oil to safety,” Gillman said.

“From that water’s edge, you can look up and down and see where 12 Medals of Honor were earned,” Gillman said.

Pruett said the National Park Service is prioritizing projects such as repairing the shoreside dock so visitors continue to have access to the USS Arizona Memorial, as well as presenting the history of the war in the Pacific.

She added that “all options of the rehabilitation of the bungalows are being considered.”

The National Park Service and Pacific Historic Parks plan to host events Dec. 5-9 to mark the 80th anniversary of the attacks, which killed 2,390 Americans. Details are available on the park’s website.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the year of the USS Arizona Memorial’s opening.

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