Covering the Cost: Mediation offers relief for struggling renters, mom-and-pop landlords
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - If you’re having trouble paying rent, you’re entitled to free mediation services before your landlord can evict you.
But most tenants don’t ask for early mediation, out of fear or not understanding the process, and end up months behind on rent.
Under a two-year state pilot program, a landlord serving an eviction notice to a tenant who fails to pay rent must also notify mediation services. Landlords are required to work out plans with tenants who want mediation.
A tenant has 10 days to request mediation, which involves all parties meeting together in person or virtually, and then separately.
It’s “a means to create a sort of stop gap so that there is an opportunity for residents to remain housed versus getting kicked out,” said Kasandra Shriver of the Hawaii Association of Realtors.
More than half of the state’s rental homes are owned by mom-and-pop landlords, local families who aren’t equipped to deal with money disputes and evictions and end up fighting lengthy, costly battles with their tenants in court.
The goal of mediation is to reduce anxiety and save everyone time and money.
“It gives them the ability to talk to each other as people, understand each other’s situation, and work out realistic agreements that the tenant can live up to and that gets the landlord paid,” said Tracey Wiltgen, executive director of the Mediation Center of the Pacific, which handles mediations on Oahu.
Wiltgen said since the law took effect Feb 5th, they’ve received 328 notices. Of those, 40 cases were mediated, and 35 reached an agreement.
In many cases, tenants paid their rent after getting the eviction notice.
Wiltgen said most people only think of mediation when they’re already in court and mandated by a judge.
“It’s just people don’t think about using it or trying it early, and that’s the reasoning behind making it a law, to help change the culture and the mindset of landlords and tenants who typically resorted to the court system for evictions,” Wiltgen said.
Last year, she said the center received 760 referrals from the court. Of those, 455 cases were mediated, and there was a 52% rate of agreement.
In contrast, 274 cases were referred to the center before they were heard in court. Of those, 86 were mediated, and 71% reached an agreement, with most tenants remaining in the home.
“We have a proven track record that when landlords and tenants mediate early before the hole gets too big and too deep, there’s a greater likelihood of an agreement,” Wiltgen said. “Ideally that the tenant remains housed in the unit or has enough time to find another place to live.”
“You don’t want a tenant to get behind 2 or 3 months because then it’s almost impossible for them to come up with a payment plan to pay what they owe and pay moving forward, and then by this time, if a landlord then wants to move forward with the eviction, if they hire an attorney and all the other things, they have more and more costs added on,” she added.
That’s what happened with independent landlord Will Choy, who rents out his disabled sister’s home to pay for her medical care. He spent months and tens of thousands of dollars to evict a tenant who refused to pay rent for months.
“We had to hire attorneys. Attorneys are expensive. And plus all of the expenses while this is all going on, you have to pay your taxes, you have to pay your utility bills,” he said.
He says the law should also protect mom-and-pop landlords like him from deceptive tenants trying to game the system and live in homes for free with no intention of paying.
Shriver of the Hawaii Association of Realtors says those types of cases are rare, adding that the law has built-in protections for landlords to prevent that type of fraud.
“The legislature set pretty decent guardrails on this system, so tenants have 10 days in order to effect the mediation. If they want to mediate, they have that 10 day notice period to make that request. If they don’t, the landlord can proceed. If they do, if they do agree to mediate, the landlord can still move to evict, still file an action in court after 20 days, and then the entire mediation process has to be completed in 30 days.”
She hopes raising awareness about the program will reduce evictions and backlog in the courts.
“It would just normally escalate into a process where neither party is discussing the problem,” Shriver said. “Hopefully this will break down those walls a little bit, that power imbalance, and get folks talking, which is really, I think all it’s going to take to resolve the majority of the issues.”
Landlords can go to the mediationcentersofhawaii.org to submit the state-mandated notice to tenants and to their county’s mediation services center.
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