Officials in Hawaii are working to remove homeless people from popular tourist locations.

According to The Associated Press, the visitor industry has been pressuring the Honolulu City Council to look into proposals that would make sitting, lying down, urinating or defecating on sidewalks in popular spots like Waikiki illegal.

Bishop Stephen Randolph Sykes, president of The Interfaith Alliance Hawaii, argues, however, that the ban would go against the traditional teachings of King Kamehameha I, who encouraged residents to lie on Hawaiian roads without fear.

"We recognize Waikiki is our economic engine, and having our homeless there is not something that is necessarily beneficial, but creating an island-wide type of situation where we're criminalizing homelessness is just not 'pono,' it's not ethical because these people don't have any place to go, and we're just pushing them around," he explained.

Still, tourism officials say they have received complaints lamenting over the number of homeless people on the island and threatening not to vacation there again.

"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," Jesse Broder Van Dyke, spokesman for Mayor Kirk Caldwell, said.

According to Broder Van Dyke, Mayor Caldwell receives several letters weekly, mostly from Asian visitors, detailing unpleasant encounters with the homeless. Many of the complaints say that a homeless person urinated in the street in front of them or came up to their family while intoxicated.

"Waikiki has seen an influx of homeless individuals who sit and lie on the sidewalks making it difficult for pedestrians to walk on the sidewalk or access businesses, which can create an unsafe and uninviting situation," Mike McCartney, president and CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, said in testimony to the Council.

Waikiki's homeless population reportedly does not feel too threatened by the proposals because they are already subject to various fines for camping in public, which they cannot pay.

"They're trying to harass everyone, and they're doing a pretty good job of it," Jim Trevarthen, a 62-year-old homeless man, said.

Another proposal under consideration would permit the homeless to sleep on Sand Island. The island is further away from tourist resorts and houses a wastewater treatment plant and a former dump. During World War II, the island was used as an Internment Camp for Japanese Americans.

Caldwell is also working on a $45 million program called Housing First, which would give permanent homes to the "chronically homeless" throughout Oahu, as reported by AP. The program would try to place the homeless in their own communities.

Housing First will take around a year to begin, Broder Van Dyke said. As a result, the city will have a temporary "Housing First Transition Center" on Sand Island, which will operate for one to three years, according to the spokesman.

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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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