Honolulu Considers Fining, Jailing Homeless Over Shopping Carts

As the sun beat down in Iwilei on a recent afternoon, the wheel of a battered Costco shopping cart kept catching on gravel as an older man pushed it across the street.

The cart was packed with Campbell’s aluminum food cans, a dirty blanket and an aging manila folder. Each time a wheel snagged, the man adjusted his stride into an awkward side limp and kept trudging forward.

When a reporter asked what the cart meant to him, he glanced down at it.

“It’s almost like my walker,” he said. “It helps keep me upright.”

A new proposed law would make the man’s possession of the shopping cart illegal. Under Bill 53 , those using shopping carts outside the premises of a store can face fines up to $2,000 or up to 30 days in jail, and their carts could be confiscated.

The bill’s introducer, Honolulu Council Chair Tommy Waters, says the measure is needed to curb shopping cart theft and abandonment.

In a state with one of the nation’s highest rates of homelessness, the bill is reigniting a long-running debate between those who say they want to contain a public nuisance and those concerned about criminalizing poverty. As of this year, there were more than 2,300 people living on Oʻahu’s streets, according to the latest Point-In-Timecensus of homeless people.

Supporters, including retailers, law enforcement officials and some residents, say the bill would help recover stolen property and address shopping carts that obstruct sidewalks, bus stops, parks and waterways. While shopping carts are often found within sidewalk homeless encampments, they’re also sometimes brought home and then ditched by shoppers who don’t want to carry their groceries by hand. As of 2024, Walmart in Kapolei had hired a man offering a shopping cart retrieval service to combat this problem.

Critics argue the proposal would disproportionately affect homeless residents who rely on shopping carts to transport and store their belongings, while failing to address the root causes of homelessness.

The man Civil Beat observed on the street, who did not give his name, objected to the idea.

“I need my cart,” he shouted. “You can’t take it away from me.”

The bill passed a first reading on Aug. 12. Members Scott Nishimoto, Val Okimoto, Augie Tulba and Matt Weyer supported Waters’ bill. Radiant Cordero and Esther Kiaʻāina voted aye with reservations. Tyler Dos Santos Tam was absent.

Abandoned shopping carts have become an increasing challenge for both retailers and neighborhoods across Oʻahu, according to Waters.

“Shopping carts can end up in public spaces for a variety of reasons, but when they are left behind, they can create safety hazards by obstructing sidewalks and clogging our streams and impose unnecessary costs on grocery stores and local retailers,” he said in a statement.

The bill states that carts left on sidewalks and near bus stops can obstruct wheelchair users, block access to transit and force pedestrians into roadways to navigate around them.

Honolulu Police Maj. Paul Okamoto, who supervises the Waikīkī district, said shopping carts contribute to public safety and health issues.

“People just throw shopping carts and trash all into the streams,” Okamoto said. “It clogs our waterways.”

Dave Erdman, interim president & CEO of the Retail Merchants of Hawaiʻi, said shopping carts are valuable business property that can cost hundreds of dollars to replace and should be treated like any other item removed from a store without permission.

“Once those carts are taken off their property and not returned,” he said, “from the retailer’s viewpoint they’re deemed stolen.”

The police department argues that the bill would close what it sees as a gap in enforcement. While officers regularly recover shopping carts, they currently have limited ability to penalize people who possess them unless a retailer is willing to pursue a theft case.

“The reality is that the retailer does not have time for that, nor do they want to spend more resources prosecuting or driving around collecting their carts,” Okamoto said. “We are stuck in this area where there is really no disincentive against removing these carts from private property and people taking them for their own private use.”

Tim Gary, a Kaimukī resident who spent more than 40 years working in the supermarket industry, said those losses can add up quickly.

“And people wonder why their grocery prices keep going up,” Gary said. “That is one of the reasons.”

Critics say that the bill addresses a symptom of homelessness rather than the conditions that create those circumstances.

Angie Knight — a former community relations manager for the Institute for Human Services, a homeless services provider — said unsheltered people rely on their carts.

“Typically shopping carts are the easiest way to move their belongings,” she said. “They also need their belongings with them 24/7.”

She said many homeless residents are constantly relocating and have few alternatives for storing their possessions.

“People have to pick up everything that they have and move on to the next place.”

Resident Jonathan Huynh, who testified against the bill, said it seems punitive.

“My first thought when I saw this bill was that this bill seems to, you know, want to put people in jail just for being poor,” Huynh said. “We want to help these people, but I think this bill really just hurts them instead.”

Okamoto said many of the people using shopping carts on the street struggle with mental illness, substance abuse or other challenges that require professional support. He said it is not productive to look the other way instead of trying to steer them toward professional help.

“Because the alternative is that we don’t do anything, right? We have soft hearts,” he said. “We don’t want to see people suffering. And a lot of people think, ‘Why don’t we just leave them alone and let them stay in the parks or on our sidewalks?’ But I don’t think that’s compassionate.”

Knight of the Institute for Human Services says the ordinance risks punishing poverty rather than solving the conditions that lead people to rely on shopping carts.

“I’ve been saying it’s criminalizing poverty for years,” she said. “Up to 30 days incarceration essentially means it’s a green light for the police just to pick people off the street and put them somewhere else in broad daylight.”

She added: “Then that person is now separated from their belongings, their medications, their identification papers. All of those things are detrimental to the process of housing somebody.”

Huynh questioned the effectiveness of the proposal to fine individuals who won’t be able to pay and whether enforcement would ultimately cost taxpayers more than the value of the carts themselves.

The average cost to house an inmate in Hawaiʻi is around $112,000 a year, which translates to over $300 per day . That’s double the national average, making Hawaii one of the most expensive states for incarceration.

“I feel that this bill may tackle cosmetics,” he added. “When we attack cosmetics, for example, pulling homeless people from the streets, that’s not solving the issue, which is housing affordability and all the stuff that causes homelessness.”

This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.