Hawaii pilot program aims to curb evictions | Honolulu Star-Advertiser

A new statewide pre-eviction mediation law that went into effect last month has already had success in keeping Hawaii tenants in their homes.

The two-year pilot program requires landlords to participate in mediation talks before filing residential eviction notices for nonpayment of rent. It’s intended to prevent unnecessary evictions and help ease court congestion by resolving landlord-tenant disputes before they escalate.

The legal basis for the program comes from Hawaii State Legislature Act 278 passed last year and was signed into law on July 2.

This builds on the success of earlier mediation initiatives in Hawaii like Act 57, which was passed by the state House of Representatives in 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to curtail a surge in eviction cases. That law required landlords to engage in mandatory, pre-eviction mediation with their tenants and attempt to find mutually agreeable solutions to settle rent disputes before going to court.

Act 57 ran out of funding and subsequently expired in August 2022. But while it was on the books it boasted an impressive success rate: Out of 1,379 rent mediations conducted by the Mediation Centers of Hawaii (MCH) — an Oahu-based umbrella organization directing cases to local mediation centers — 87% of parties reached an agreement. It is credited with diverting more than 1,200 eviction cases away from the court system.

State lawmakers have praised the new pilot program as an offshoot of the most effective parts of the now-defunct COVID-era bill.

“We are taking the lessons learned during COVID and testing a professionalized, pre-eviction framework through this pilot program,” state Sen. Troy Hashimoto of Maui said in a news release. “Instead of relying on limited resources in the courts, this data-driven approach encourages early dialogue and allows us to measure how effectively professional mediation can reduce court backlog and resolve disputes.”

Under the new program rules, landlords must give tenants a 10 calendar-day window to seek mediation services before starting eviction proceedings, and must upload eviction notices to MCH’s website. The organization will then direct cases to one of five local mediation centers in Honolulu, Kailua-Kona, Hilo, Lihue (Kauai) or Wailuku (Maui).

If the tenant opts to schedule mediation within that 10-day period, an additional 10 days is afforded for talks to take place before the case can be brought to court. Mediation services are free for both parties, funded with state money appropriated in Act 278 and directed to organizations like MCH.

However, attorney costs accrued by landlords or tenants will not be funded by the state, and if a tenant cancels or fails to attend a scheduled mediation, landlords are allowed to request tenants pay for their attorney fees.

The mediation center contracted to provide services to East Hawaii Island landlords and tenants is Ku‘ikahi Mediation Center, where Executive Director Julie Mitchell has seen the efficacy of the new program firsthand.

Data is slim because the law has only been in effect for one month, but even early on Mitchell has seen four out of four cases assigned to the center thus far be successfully resolved, with three tenants able to stay in their rentals and one moving out without eviction. The West Hawaii Mediation Center serving Kona-side has successfully mediated five tenants to stay, and one amicable move-out.

Part of this success, Mitchell believes, is commencing talks between parties before back rent builds up and animosity and hopelessness start to grow.

“The idea behind this program is having early conversation and early communication,” she said. “It’s trying to prevent eviction as a preventative measure, to preserve housing, to prevent homelessness. It’s much easier to have a conversation when you’re one month behind on rent than when you’re 10 months behind on rent.”

Although these types of initiatives are often assumed to be more beneficial to tenants, Mitchell contends that landlords have also expressed appreciation at having access to mediation.

“I think it’s a sense of relief,” she said. “For landlords, they usually are a business and want to make sure they can get the money they need to live, oftentimes to pay a mortgage. Eviction is obviously not good for the tenant … but it’s also not good for landlords. It’s very costly to take people to court and to have to renovate and get the property ready for the next person.”

Ideally, she said, negotiations that the center facilitates will be a win-win for everyone, including the courts.

“When I’m reading the agreements, it seems like it’s advantageous to both parties,” she said. “If the landlords are trying to recoup back rent, they can do that. We want to find solutions that are going to be best for everybody … and the courts are swamped, the judges have a lot of cases on the docket, so this is a way to alleviate those impacts on the courts as well.”

The pilot program will track its success through annual reports to the Hawaii State Judiciary, supplying data that will influence other statewide eviction prevention measures in the future.