For a while there, everyone fell for it. But seriously, if that little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road next to a city park is not part of the city park, then what else could it possibly be? For a couple of months, illegal campers had everyone believing that the narrow line of lawn was somehow exempt from laws, an anything-goes, no-one-can-stop-you zone of freedom. Yesterday, Mayor Hannemann finally put an end to that.

But it won't be the end of the problem.

When the Waikíkí homeless encampment appeared, it came up unobtrusively. There was a cluster of tents and tarps on Kapi'olani's grassy lawn tucked away by the fence line behind some trees. Then it grew. It was shocking to think O'ahu's homeless population had broken through the deflector shield into showpiece Waikíkí. Yet compared to the row of tents that took root along the Kaläkaua sidewalk, that first Kapi'olani cluster a year ago was discreet. The 40 or more tents set up right up against the roadside was blatant and brazen, daring the powers-that-be to move them. The homeless community figured out that no police officer would bother them, because if there's one thing a beat cop hates, it's dealing with an unpredictable, unwashed homeless person, especially when the public is watching.

What must the tourists think, those few who can afford to vacation now?

What do residents think? So many people who live on O'ahu think of Waikíkí as ceded land — that is, land ceded over to the tourist industry and no longer accessible to people who actually live here. Now it's been ceded over to homeless people. Wow, and we thought money was power. Homeless power is based on something else altogether. It plays off sympathy. We know these are hard times. We worry about the kids. We understand some are affected by mental illness. We can't easily separate out the "poor things" from the ones who need to get a job and stop mooching.

The city is rousting the row of tents this week to "clean the sidewalk," but the tents will soon be back. For folks who don't have jobs, those homeless campers sure work hard to work the system. They will be back, as they have been every time they've been shooed away, greater in numbers, and more defiant. There's room at the shelters, but why live in a shelter when you can camp in a beautiful park? Perhaps next they'll be moving tents onto Kaläkaua Avenue because, after all, there's no law that expressly says, "No camping in the street."