Maui court confirms residents should have received hearing before sweep of homeless encampment

WAILUKU — A group of Maui residents who sued the county after they were expelled from a homeless encampment in 2021 notched another legal victory on Tuesday in a case that’s pushed officials to consider policy reforms of cleanup sweeps. 

Second Circuit Court Judge Kirstin Hamman backed a Hawai‘i Supreme Court decision last year that said the unhoused residents living along Amala Place near Kanahā Beach Park in Kahului should have received a hearing before the sweep. 

In October 2021, Sonia Davis, Jessica Lau, Lauralee Riedell and Adam Walton sued Maui County and then-Mayor Michael Victorino after they and about 60 other people were forced to leave the area or face arrest, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai‘i, which is representing the group.

“We’re just trying to survive, we’re just trying to live our life,” Davis said outside the courtroom on Tuesday morning. “All we ask is just give us a place where we can stay until we can get the help that we need, but they don’t look at it that way. They just chase us away and we gotta find another place, start all over again.”

In 2021, the encampment along Amala Place had grown extensive, with rows of dilapidated cars that served as shelters and shopping carts packed with belongings. On Sept. 1 of that year, the county put out a news release announcing it planned to conduct a sweep of the area, according to court documents. 

County officials said unhoused residents were blocking the entrance to the nearby wastewater treatment plant and starting arguments. State officials complained that they were harassing staff, leaving hazardous waste and vandalizing the fence surrounding Kanahā Pond, an important breeding ground for endangered waterbirds. 

On Sept. 14, the county distributed notices to the Amala Place community and posted notices to vacate county property by Sept. 20. The plaintiffs and the ACLU said they didn’t get enough notice, pointing out that people being evicted from homes get 45 days’ notice while they were barely given a week. They said they asked for a hearing, which would have allowed them to explain their circumstances, ask for help or more time, challenge the sweep’s legality or agree to relocate without the threat of criminal prosecution. They say they did not get a response. 

“In this situation, it was very clear to me and to our organization that the county was essentially treating unhoused community members as less than, as less entitled to certain constitutional rights, and we wanted to push back and challenge that position and that notion,” said Wookie Kim, legal director of the ACLU of Hawai‘i. 

County and state crews began a cleanup on Sept. 21 that removed 58 tons of solid waste and 54 derelict vehicles from the area. 

The residents sued a month later. In March of last year, the Hawai‘i Supreme Court ruled that they had constitutionally protected interests for the personal property that the county destroyed in the sweep, and that they should have received a contested case hearing beforehand. 

Maui County Deputy Corporation Counsel Bradley Sova questioned in court whether a contested case was needed, especially given that the sweep had already happened. 

“Now, we’re obviously in an awkward position where we’re post-sweep, and we’re determining not how to prevent the loss of property but the harm that flows from that loss of property,” Sova said in Hamman’s courtroom on Tuesday. 

Sova declined to comment further outside the courtroom.

But Kim said it’s a crucial chance for the former Amala Place residents to explain on the record how they were impacted and what they lost, because “protecting rights here will protect everyone’s rights from improper governmental intervention.” He said there’s no timeline yet for a hearing, which would be similar to a trial with witness testimony, evidence and a hearing officer who will write up the findings.

Lau managed to remove the two Scion cars she and her son used to sleep in, but she lost just about everything else on the day of the sweep, including the laptop and tablet she hoped to use to go back to school, their clothing and a paddle bike. She said she watched a forklift hoist a pallet full of her belongings into a dumpster. 

Evicted from her apartment in early 2020 because she was behind on a month’s rent, Lau lived near Kahului Harbor at first before ending up at Amala Place, where she stayed until one morning she was awoken by voices blasting over bullhorns ordering people to pack up on the day of the sweep.

She called shelters every day for months, hoping to find a spot, until she finally landed a two-bedroom space with her son. But when he was transferred to a mental health program and she was forced to move into a dorm, fears over a previous sexual assault pushed her back out to the harbor where at least she knew the people around her, friends she’d grown up and went to school with. 

Lau says she can’t afford to rent now because she works part time and has seen her income as a commercial driver in the tourism sector fall since the pandemic and the August 2023 wildfire in Lahaina. 

“Even now, I feel discriminated (against),” Lau said. “They haven’t even solved the problem with the first group of unsheltered people, and then the wildfire hit, and now we’re starting to see the homeless from the wildfire. … They’re doing everything and anything for the people of the westside fire, but you wouldn’t do that for us.”

Davis, who said she ended up on Amala Place after struggling with a meth addiction, was arrested after missing a call from her probation officer. She was released from jail shortly before the sweep. Worried about getting arrested if she were still at Amala Place on the day of the sweep, Davis said she didn’t have much time to move out her belongings and lost critical items like a cooking stove and generator — and items she was keeping for friends and family, including a stroller for her niece’s baby. 

“Whatever they put me through caused me to have emotional distress,” Davis said. “Until today, every time when I think about it, I still end up having a breakdown.” 

After the sweep, Davis found a place to live through the Steadfast Housing Development Corporation’s waiting list. She said she has become clean and is now working to graduate from Drug Court. She’s thankful to be housed and sober, “but now I just want the county to be accountable for what they did, and that’s it.”

The sweep of Amala Place and the lawsuit that followed prompted Maui County Council Member Gabe Johnson to propose a measure last year that would regulate how the county conducts sweeps of homeless encampments. Bill 111 includes guidelines for the notification and cleanup process, and requires the county to identify alternative shelter locations and store any personal property removed from the encampment in an accessible location. 

Johnson said he’s opposed to sweeps but that if the county conducts them, at least policymakers can try to set guidelines. He plans to meet with Council Member Shane Sinenci this month to schedule the bill in Sinenci’s Water Authority, Social Services and Parks Committee.

“I can’t make the administration stop doing sweeps, right?” Johnson said Tuesday. “So I’m trying to say, if you’re planning to do it, this is the parameters, let’s treat people with some humanity, treat them with some dignity.”

But Lisa Darcy, who advocates for unsheltered individuals and was in court with former Amala Place residents on Tuesday, felt the focus of the bill should be less about defending the county from lawsuits and more on protecting people’s human and civil rights. She said people need somewhere to go when they’re booted from encampments and can’t afford housing rent or find space at a shelter. 

“These sweeps are so emotionally damaging, they are incredibly financially damaging,” said Darcy, who runs the organization Share Your Mana and is on the board of directors of the Hawai‘i Public Housing Authority. “I don’t even know how many times I have given tents to the same people over and over and over when they get torn down. … You can’t have a sweep without having safe places for people to go.”