Editorial: Mediating rent disputes

By most accounts, the landlord-tenant “pre-litigation mediation program” has been a success — helping to resolve back-rent disputes by spurring mediation to prevent the harsh action of eviction. So it made perfect sense, with federal COVID monies ending this fall, to launch a state-funded pilot project to continue the initiative, at least in the short run, as a bridge to ensure that Hawaii residents who’ve fallen behind in rent from pandemic hardships don’t fall into homelessness.

That’s what House Bill 1439 was intended to do — but failed to achieve, amid state legislators’ last-minute budgeting chaos that left worthy projects unfunded. The public deserved better.

And though lawmakers now vow to revisit HB 1439 next session, it would be bad to see, during the yearlong delay, a spike in evictions and homelessness that could have been averted by robust mediation paired with rental assistance funds.

The last version of HB 1439 aimed to set aside $12 million for overdue rent to landlords, linked with $1.5 million for pre-litigation mediation, in an effort to stave off costly and time-consuming evictions. Proof of concept already had been achieved during the height of the pandemic emergency — with mandatory mediation enabling struggling renters to stay housed, while landlords received due payment from governmental rent-assistance funds. That led to pre-eviction mediation being furthered in this state in 2021 via Act 57, which facilitated mediation between late renters and landlords, and reduced court costs and strains on the judicial system.

“The Act 57 program diverted from the court system as many as 1,201 eviction cases,” the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice found in an October report, done with the Housing Crisis Research Collaborative.

“For the landlords, the agreements reached often meant they were able to recover back rent and avoid the costly processes of litigating an eviction action and finding new tenants,” the report found. And for families, “they avoided forced moves that often result in the loss of security deposits and belongings, a change in schools, a longer commute to work, a negative mark on their rental history, and for some, homelessness.”

All that underscores the shame of this year’s failure to pass HB 1439. Next session, it will be incumbent on lawmakers to redouble efforts to vet terms of this bill earlier. That should include justifying the amount of rental assistance set aside for landlords: $12 million might well be a proper amount, but inserted abruptly as it was in the last conference committee without context, it’s hard to know.

The mediation program’s principles are sound. Lawmakers now have many months to refine this bill and get right its final form and funding amounts; they cannot let a worthwhile program die because they can’t get their act together.