The Star-Advertiser reports today on a Honolulu City Council proposal to create so-called “safe zones” for homeless camps (“Legislators want ‘safe zones’ enacted”).

But you have to read down to the 19th paragraph before learning that the policy is opposed by the city’s housing office and national homeless advocates.

Marc Alexander, executive director of the city’s Office of Housing, however, said safe zones are opposed by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homeless and the National Alliance to End Homelessness because they don’t work. Alexander said they’re also not cost-effective and are “merely an excuse to hide the homeless and move the problem out of the public sphere as quickly as possible and not really help the homeless.”

With no foreshadowing earlier in the story that the “safe zone” idea is opposed by homeless advocates, many readers won’t get down far enough in the story to learn these critical details.

And as a lawyer quoted in the story makes clear, the number and location of proposed “safe zones” is key when taken in the context of proposals to extend the sleep/lie ban islandwide.

In any case, it’s obviously a hot issue that needs all sides aired fully.