MA'ILI — Not long ago, Marianne Beaman was fed up with the goings-on around the homeless encampment on the 4-acre Nani Kai section of Ulehawa Beach Park.

"I was mad about it, believe me," she said. "All this noise ... and all the drugs and alcohol at either end of the park."

Today, she resides in that encampment, in a tent less than 50 yards from the duplex she and her husband, Bert, rented for nine years.

"I lived right there in that very house," she said, pointing to the beachfront property. "We made the hop from right there to right here. We've seen it from both sides."

Now, with the city scheduled to close the park for a week beginning Feb. 10 and evict the tent dwellers permanently, Beaman is concerned about losing another place to live.

She's not the only one.

The eviction and cleanup mark the next step in the city's campaign to reclaim beaches on the Wai'anae Coast dominated by the homeless — for years, in some cases — and return them to use by the general public. Dozens of beaches here are inhabited by the homeless, and Nani Kai will become only the third to be reclaimed — nearly a year after Ma'ili Beach Park, considered the model by which all beach cleanup operations are measured.

But the cleanup plan announced Dec. 26 caught state officials and homeless service providers by surprise in light of an oft-stated city pledge not to displace the homeless from beaches and parks until they have someplace else to go.

Kaulana Park, the state's homeless solutions coordinator on the Wai'anae Coast, said there is no shelter space available for the estimated 100 homeless people living at Nani Kai.

And since its original announcement, the city has said the cleanup also would include Surfers Beach, a smaller inhabited beach between Nani Kai and Ma'ili Stream, meaning even more beach dwellers will be affected.

Meanwhile, the state's two emergency shelters, as well as two private transitional shelters serving the coast, are filled to capacity, Park said.

"It's just a matter of rotation now," he said. "As people transition out into permanent housing, then they can open up for those who are on the beaches. But those are single numbers — two or three to maybe five or six people. It's unfortunate that the city has to move this fast on it."

Considering two new area emergency shelters are scheduled to open in June, Park said it would have been better for the city to wait.

But Melissa Lauer, 48, who lives at Sea Country — a modern subdivision of homes in the half-million-dollar range not far from Nani Kai beach — said taxpaying residents there are tired of waiting.

"We've been extraordinarily patient," she said.

Lauer said she feels for the plight of those who have been forced from their homes by "greedy speculators" who are transforming Hawai'i into an "economic refugee camp" and are "pricing Hawai'i's residents right out of the island."

But she has little sympathy for those who refuse to leave the beach simply because they somehow feel they are entitled to stay there. And she speaks for many residents on the mountain side of Farrington Highway who say they've endured the beach mess long enough.

"I just hope the city and county keeps to its word," said Lauer, who added that the situation on the coast's beaches is unsafe for the homeless themselves, as well as residents in surrounding neighborhoods.

COMMUNITY FRUSTRATED

The park at Nani Kai has one of the most modern comfort stations on O'ahu. Built in 2005, the facility already has been trashed. The urinal in the men's restroom, for example, has been ripped from the wall and replaced with a makeshift, cut-out plastic jug.

On Dec. 21, police raided the tent of Nani Kai beach dweller Marlene Anduha, 52. Anduha was arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, plus numerous charges of selling dangerous drugs.

The incident was the last straw for some residents living nearby.

"The community is very frustrated," said HPD Maj. Michael Moses. "And I understand. So are we — the police and all the rest of the city departments. But you know this problem didn't occur overnight. And it isn't going to get solved overnight."

Moses said the weeklong Nani Kai and Surfers cleanup will be handled in exactly the same manner as a similar, successful operation at the homeless encampment at Ma'ili Beach Park in March 2007.

In that effort, tent dwellers were notified in writing a month ahead that they must leave. On the appointed morning, all but one homeless inhabitant — Anduha — had left the park. Moses and city spokesman Bill Brennan coaxed Anduha to follow suit, the park was shut down and city crews rolled in. The sanitized park was reopened about a week later, but with signs stating the park would be closed to the public from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. nightly.

Ma'ili Beach Park has not been occupied since by tent dwellers. Vacated homeless residents had been given the option of going to the state's new, $6.5 million, 275-bed emergency homeless shelter in Wai'anae, or moving to another occupied beach.

Next month, Nani Kai inhabitants won't have the same shelter option, according to the state.

WON'T FORCE THEM OUT

Still, Mayor Mufi Hannemann has said none of the homeless will be forced to leave Nani Kai or Surfers Beach unless there is someplace else for them to go. Deborah Morikawa, director of the Department of Community Services, said those beach dwellers have been given more than a month to work with area service providers who will assist them in finding available shelter accommodations, or at least getting their names on a wait list.

"The way the shelters work is there is always turnover," Morikawa said. "They (the homeless) need to be responsible enough to take advantage of what's being offered instead of waiting until the last day."

But one veteran homeless service provider said sheltering the Nani Kai homeless could be a difficult proposition right now.

"I'm not looking forward to this," said Tulutulu "Tulu" Toa, homeless specialist for Wai'anae Community Outreach. "Everything is full. So those at Nani Kai can move in with family or friends. Or, they can move to another park."

Toa said Ma'ili Beach Park was occupied by numerous newly homeless families with children that were anxious to get off the beach and into the new emergency shelter in Wai'anae. The subsequent emphasis on getting beach-dwelling families into shelters has been highly successful, she said.

The same does not apply to Nani Kai homeless.

"Right now, we've got plenty of resources for families with children," Toa said. "There are emergency and transitional shelters for them to go to. But Nani Kai is different. There are almost no families at Nani Kai. There are no kids. It's all couples and singles. And there's no place for couples and singles to go."

And that includes the Beamans, who had never been homeless before their landlord decided to convert their duplex unit into a vacation rental a while back. Six months ago, the couple and their two dogs began an anxious and reluctant occupation of Nani Kai Beach.

"At first we said, 'We're not going to move to the beach, we're going to find a place to live,' " Marianne Beaman said. "My husband works. I'm on Social Security. But, we could not find a place we could afford. We don't have any relatives here we can live with. So, finally we used our savings to build a shelter that would protect us from the weather.

"Now, we don't have any idea where we're supposed to go."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.