“Happens all the time,” Mr. Cruz said after he made his way to the other side of Kalakaua Avenue. “They won’t let you stand over there.”
“I’ve got four of them,” he said, reaching into a billfold as he displayed the tattered tickets.
This tourist mecca has had a surge in its homeless population, which is up 32 percent over the past five years. The explosion has prompted one of the toughest police crackdowns in the nation, sounded alarms among civic leaders that aggressive panhandlers are scaring off tourists, and set off an anguished debate on how to deal with the destitute in a state that prides itself on its friendly and easygoing ways.
Honolulu officials say they are confiscating up to 10 tons of property left on the sidewalk by homeless people every week.
“It’s time to declare a war on homelessness, which is evolving into a crisis in Honolulu,” Mayor Kirk Caldwell, a Democrat, wrote in a provocative essay that appeared in The Honolulu Star-Advertiser this month. “We cannot let homelessness ruin our economy and take over our city.”
