Look beyond the grass skirts and floral printed shirts on the backs of countless uncouth tourists, and you’ll see a dark underbelly to America’s tropical islands in the pacific.

Hawaii has gotten a lot of attention over the last couple of months for a pool of blatantly anti-homeless legislation, which has been brought before the Honolulu city council.

Last month, Councilman Rod Tam introduced a bill that would attempt to regulate the smell of bus passengers in Hawaii.  The bill would criminalize any person whose odor “unreasonably disturb[s] others or interfere with their use of the transit system.”

Despite the obvious flaw in the wide interpretation of this bill (how smelly is too smelly?), the consequences it proposed were unreasonable.  Any person who was found to be excessively homeless (excuse me; odorous) would be fined $500 or spend six months in jail.  That’s six months in jail because you didn’t have the chance to shower that morning since, you know, you don’t have a home and all.

This is clearly a law directed against the homeless – would someone be fined or thrown in jail for wearing too much cologne or too much sunscreen?  That stuff can really bother my nose…but we all know the answer is no; this is exactly the kind of law that would be selectively enforced against the poor and homeless.

Luckily, the national attention this gained meant that the council voted against this particular bill.  However, this isn’t the end of anti-homeless legislation in Honolulu.

The council voted last week to approve a bill making it illegal to sleep, sit or lie down on public sidewalks.  The bill came after community members complained about the homeless sleeping on the sidewalk and in doorways, after being banned from public parks in the area.

This bill, while similar to a Seattle ban, is far more extensive – banning people from sitting or sleeping at ALL times of the day, every day of the year.

Instead of offering any real solutions to the Hawaii’s homeless population, this is merely the city attempting to make the homeless population invisible, to shoo them away to a different part of the city where no one will have to see them.

Those caught violating this new law would be fined $50 after an initial warning.  This may sound reasonable compared to the previously mentioned law, but it’s by no means a small fine for someone living in poverty.  If you have no home and are sleeping outside every night, you could potentially get fined $350 a week.  Once these go unpaid it’s only a matter of time before you end up in jail.

I’ve often cited a 1962 Supreme Court case, which ruled it unconstitutional to criminalize a person’s right “to be”.  Doing so, they ruled, violated the eighth amendment protecting against cruel and unusual punishment; and that is exactly what is happening in Hawaii.  Land of the free indeed.