 Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Jane Sugimura and this is Kondo Insider. This is the show about condominium living and for people who live and work in condos. And today on my show I've got a very good old friend, Richard Port, who's a long time condo owner advocate. We've worked, I've known Richard for many years and we've worked hand-in-hand on condominium issues. Welcome to the show. Well I'm glad to be here and we have been longtime friends. And Richard tell me, I mean you used to be a condominium owner and you served on boards for many many years. Tell me how you got involved with condos. Well I moved into a condo in December 1974 but like many condo owners I didn't get involved immediately. In fact I was happy you know working hard at my work and wanted other people to run the business of the condo. But around 1980 or 81, I think 80, I began to hear some things that were happening in the condo from other owners and so I decided to get involved. Initially I was on a building and grounds committee for my condo and the president asked us to look into storage lockers for owners and we came up with a plan and I wanted to attend the board meeting at which this was going to be discussed. But I was told no only board members can attend board meetings. So the chair of our committee was a board member but I wasn't allowed to attend and I said that doesn't seem right. So I went up to the legislature and I mentioned this to them. I said your meetings are open shouldn't the condo meetings be open? And they said well that sounds reasonable so they passed a law allowing any owner to attend board meetings. Up until that time you could only attend the annual meetings or special association meetings. The following year I went up and I said to the legislature well what about absentee owners shouldn't they be able to get the minutes of the meetings and the legislators said well that sounds reasonable so they passed another law that owners who couldn't attend maybe mainland or wherever they would be able to get the minutes. So each year I kept looking at what were the issues in condos that needed to be dealt with. One of the more important well two of the more important issues over time were the ability to get the financial documents the monthly financial statements and also to be able to get contracts that had already been signed. I realized and I still realize that when they're in negotiation the owners have to wait and let the board members do their work but once the contracts are signed they should be able to have access to the contracts. So over those years a number of those kind of issues and then I got into different type issues that is generally speaking you could only be elected by the board if you had sufficient proxy. Well most of the proxies went out from the board and the board members would get the proxy usually to the board as a whole or maybe to the president of the board and it meant that only the friends of the board members or the friends of the president would be able to be elected to the board generally speaking. So I was able to work by that time I think I was beginning to work with you and the legislature and we were able to change the law that owners were able to get owners lists which they had not at never before been able to get get owners list and go out with their own attempt to gain proxies to get on the board. So that was kind of the second level of work that I was involved in and so to the point now where an owner who feels that they can contribute to the board can actually get sufficient proxies to be elected to the board. Not easy but it's done. And you know how do you learn about these issues? I mean I mean were you actually impacted or did people come and tell you and how did they know to get in touch with you? Well there were two ways that this happened. Some the early ones that I already mentioned it was from my own experience but gradually I was beginning to get questions from people who lived in other condominiums and they started saying well can we do this can we do that and if it sounded reasonable I actually would I actually started a small organization that worked on helping other condominiums owners who were having problems and so I did hear these issues second hand. It wasn't only in my building but I would hear them in in other buildings and then of course I got involved in the Hawaii Council of Association of Providence Owners are called HCCA now and with your help we were able to get into other issues. I think the ones that I've already mentioned were very basic kinds of issues that really. And this is the one about getting documents. Yes. One of the basic rights that owners have is if you know they are members of an association so there are certain documents relating to the management and administration of the building. At good point because for example the management contract previously you could only if you were a board member could you get that contract and we were able to get access to those kind of documents. Okay and and and so there were some you went to the legislature and you got the bills passed and so now the homeowners were at least on paper under the Hawaii law weren't kind of they get certain of these documents. Right. Did that cure the problem? Not totally because sometimes there would be a denial even though that was what the law said there would be a denial and so it was the immediate problem was the only way you could get access to the documents if the other side refused was to go to court and that's a very expensive process that many owners would not be able to afford. Right. And so we were stymied for a while on that issue and then I think you began to work on this question of mediation and the other related issues to get. And the DCCA set up RICO. That's correct. And RICO is the Regulated Industries Complaint Office and so basically what that organization does is any agency or group that is regulated by the state of Hawaii DCCA and that would be contractors and realtors and licensed professionals and condominiums are all kind of regulated by the DCCA. So if you fall into that category and you have a concern then you can make a complaint to the RICO office who will then basically investigate. And not only not only that but even as a little bit of a basic effort within the RICO was the ability for example well within DCCA was to be able to find out who was whether the contractors that were being used were licensed and whether there had been any complaints against those particular contractors. And occasionally at one point I became president of my condo and when I became president I would always contact the DCCA and make sure that we were using licensed contractors and we would also look at the complaints against them. So that even before some of the other issues like mediation and arbitration they RICO was very helpful and the DCCA was very helpful in terms of those kind of issues. And that's important because you don't want to hire a contractor who's not stable and is not for example not able to be bonded. Right and who doesn't have the insurance in case he gets hurt. Right. Because if he got hurt on your property the association would end up paying it for his workers comp. Correct. Right. So I mean all these things are are really really important and the people who sit on boards really you know unless they you know make sure that they use licensed contractors they don't know until there's a problem. That's right. And I think there have been a few condominiums that have run into that kind of problem. And it's also incumbent now that we have those protections it's incumbent on boards to make sure that they they find out whether the contractors they're using are licensed. And in fact in I think many condos the condo board requires that individual owners use licensed contractors. When they do work inside their units. Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. And you were talking about several issues and one of them was dispute resolution. And under the condominium statute there are two things you can do you can either mediate or arbitrate. Right. And early on by the way although we had that right it was very difficult to get a board condo board to agree to mediate or arbitrate. And it was only after some work that for example your organization did that was able to get a better response to request for mediation and arbitration. And right. And a couple years ago one of the things one of the new changes that happened was evaluate of mediation and you and I went down to the real estate commission and we testified in support of the evaluate of mediation. That's right. And an evaluate of mediation is basically a mediation where you have a neutral and the parties in the dispute go and tell the neutral their you know the neutral this is to both sides and then and what happens in a typical mediation is that neutral tries to bring the two parties together. In a value of mediation the neutral makes gives you an opinion and at the at one of the organizations that are you know contracted by the state of Hawaii to do a value of mediation dispute prevention resolution their neutrals are retired judges. That's right. Right. And you know so you know most people you know will give a lot of credence to some judges as well you know you got a crappy case or hey you know you've got a really good case and you know so I mean I think we both agreed that that's probably a step better than just regular mediation because the person who gets the opinion from a retired judge that they got a crappy case I mean kind of knows that they can't go any further and if they can't resolve it in that that medium that they you know they just have to you know give it up but anyway and evaluate of mediation is paid for by the state of Hawaii. That's right. By the condo ed fund and you know what the condo ed fund tell us about the condo ed fund. Well basically every every owner every condo and every owner in a condo has to pay into a fund that goes to support the effort of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and especially condo condo on condo issues. Right. And so that that's used to subsidize education of board members and owners and it's also because of legislation it's being used for mediation. Right. And so that means that if a condo owner has a dispute that really they should elect evaluated mediation go into mediation because it's subsidized by their own maintenance fees that they're they pay. It's not like they write a check. They have to pay their maintenance fees and the association they belong to gets billed by the state of Hawaii and the association writes a check. So the condo owner never knows. I mean it's not aware of the fact that they're paying into this fund. That's right. But but yet you know if they have a dispute that's the one place they should go to because the fund will subsidize their dispute resolution. Right. And that's better than a lawsuit. Oh absolutely. Lawsuits are very expensive. Right. And a lot of unit owners a lot of homeowners you know really can't afford filing a lawsuit against their association. Right. And you know even when they go up against their association it's almost like you know a double whammy because they have to pay their own attorney's fees and their maintenance fees are paying for the condominium. That's right. To sue you. They're paying both ways. Right. So you're paying both ways. And so in fact it could get worse. You can end up having to pay the legal fees of the association. Right. Well you know we're right about our midpoint. So let's take a one minute break. OK. And it will come back and we'll talk about some new legislation some current legislation that has updated some of these areas. And perhaps we can touch on owners responsibilities. Yes. And board responsibilities. OK. We can do that when we get back. This is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness. And I'm DeSoto Brown the co-host of Human Humane Architecture which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. and with the show's host Martin Despeng we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live but other aspects of our life not only here in Hawaii but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. OK. Welcome back to Kondo Insider. My name is Jane Sugimura and we have as my guest a very good old friend Richard Port and we're talking about owners rights or the evolution of owners rights because Richard's been involved in this since the 70s. Right. And so you know we've been talking about the different issues that you've been involved with and the changes that have happened. But you know Kondo owners have rights. They also have obligations don't they. That's right. Why don't we talk about the obligations. Well some of the simpler ones that everybody understands first of all they have they have an obligation to pay their maintenance fees and in a timely manner otherwise they end up with delinquencies and foreclosures and nobody wants that. So that's the basic right a basic responsibility that they have. But also they have a responsibility to to themselves and to other owners to pay attention to what's going on in the building. And that means the good things and the bad things. They for example if they see that the office the maintenance the management office is not well staffed or that some things are some people being put down by the staff. Those kind of things should be reported to the board members so that they know what they're finding or if there's litter around in the building. So that's one side of what need they need to do. Also they really should try especially if they live in the building or live in the community. They should try to attend if not every board meeting at least occasionally attend board meetings so that they know the kind of decisions that the board is having to make. Not all the decisions are easy. For example one of the things that we find now in all the buildings in Hawaii they're getting older. The buildings that are now 30 40 close to 50 years old they have major maintenance problems and so the the residents have to be prepared sorry the owners have to be prepared to help the board in paying for those and not just complain about the maintenance fees going up. But I think a true way of looking at it is owners should pay attention. If there are newsletters they should have paid attention. Certainly if now that they have access to minutes they should pay attention to minutes. Boards are beginning to send those out by email and access is much better than it was back in the 70s 80s 90s. But you know I think you know as together with you know owners rights here talking about owners what now we're talking about owners responsibilities. One of the things I think that I hear I've been hearing is that you know owners when you're talking about association staff they kind of feel that these people are their employees right and and and you always hear this situation about some unit owner telling an association staff member maybe housekeeping or maintenance you know to run an errand for them and you know and and even though they see them every day and you know and you know the staff I mean they don't want to say no they don't want to offend a unit owner but you know and and as a board president I mean I've had to step in and basically tell the unit owner you know these people work for the association they do not work for you right you are a member of the association but you cannot ask them to do work for you because there's a liability issue and you know and we just can't if you have 300 units you can't have a staff running errands for the people who live in the building. Related to that is the issue of there should be no favoritism by the board of certain owners being able to get certain services that other owners are not able to do. One of the examples is you know most most buildings have times where you can like 10 minutes in a in a 10-minute zone for parking you can't have the friends of the board able to park there 30 minutes while other owners are given you know noted after 10 minutes that they are in violation. Right I mean I mean that's one of the common complaints that that we hear is preferential treatment right right everybody including the people who sit on the board have to be treated the same and and if there are rules they apply to everybody for the board president down to the person who owns a you know a studio apartment. A true story one time I forgot where I had parked my car and I was there for probably 30 minutes in a 10 minutes zone I had when I came down to my car I had a violation notice on my car and that's the way it should be and I was president at the time but that that's the way it should be. Yeah and then you know so so with unit owners I mean they do have rights but one of their rights is when it comes to the staff the employees they are not their bosses yeah that's right and and and it's really hard when you live in a building with you know three four five hundred unit owners and they've been there for 20 30 years and and the staff has been there maybe just as long and after a while they figure hey man you know I live here you're an employee I can tell you what to do and you know that's totally wrong. We should touch on board obligations too. Okay. Not only to treat everybody fairly but also to make sure that owners have information that is accurate and timely if there are going to be major expenses they need to keep the owners notified of those kinds of expenses and it also means that they can't just say oh well we won't raise maintenance fees this year and then suddenly they don't have enough money to take care of the things that need to be done so there are some obligations that the board members have as well. Right and and you know but that's a whole separate episode that you know we've we've we've done before but you know there was some recent legislation in fact this past year where and in fact you were almost central to one of the issues and that was at 196 which the governor signed this year in in July and it becomes effective on January 1 2019 and that's where this is about mediation right and one of the changes in that bill was the people who could benefit from mediation and what we did is we went in and we changed it and we said if you're a board member and you're fighting with your board you now can do mediation because you were never in that group as well as managing agents. How did that why why did we go through that process? In the simplest in the simplest way we would think oh it's usually boards versus owners but occasionally there can be a split a minority group and a majority group on a board that happens too and in fact it happened to you. That's correct and so that's why we needed to change that law and fortunately I must say I must give credit to the legislature in listening to some of these peculiarities especially now it was easy in the 80s when they could see hey makes perfect sense to be able to make some of the changes that I spoke about earlier but now we've made so many improvements to the law some of the things that we get into now don't happen very often but when they happen they they do need to be dealt with and in your case you did get into a dispute with your board and you did request mediation and how long did it take you two years and it should be it should be two months right and it took a court proceeding to do that that's right and and and if I recall the judge chewed us out like what were we doing in his courtroom wasting his time that's right and he and he banned us to the mediators and and and it did get resolved rather quickly after two after two years but then this was before this change happened but we went to the legislature said you know if you don't this is why you have to make this change because we can't have people like you and you weren't the only one where you were having a trouble problem and even in my case I knew most of the laws so you know some owners don't know some of the predictions we've already talked about today they don't know they're all of their rights so in my case I knew my rights and yet I still had to wait two years right and another thing we did because of the process we were going through this bill also has a provision in there that says if you demand mediation and you don't get it and you have to go to court to order get a court order to you know force the other side into a mediation that you're entitled to get your attorney's fees up to $1500 right that was also part of this and I and I remember when we went into the legislature this is well why do you need that is because otherwise you know nobody listens I mean the statute says shall yeah but you know they just stole while you and they just don't want to comply and so we basically say you know if you guys really mean shall and you really mean that this is a mandatory law then you got to give us some some tools so that we can implement it why well we're mentioning this for those who are watching this presentation if they have questions about issues that need to be addressed at the legislature the best way is to contact you to let you let you know what kind of issues and complaints that they have right and that's that's been how we've gotten some changes to the but be before you run out of time to that very same statute allowed for voluntary arbitration that's right binding arbitration and that's different from what's on the books because right now we have a arbitration statute with a de novo provision that's right and with the de novo provision that means you go all the way through arbitration and then do it all over again right and if the and then if one party who loses is unhappy they can ask for a de novo review and so you start from square one but this one in under act 196 allows you the parties to voluntary voluntarily enter into binding arbitration and when that happens then the condo ed will sub condo ed fund will subsidize that arbitration right yes so real improvement so that's a big improvement and so so you know these things have come about because people like you and other condo owners said you know we need to have a mechanism so that our disputes our gripes can be heard and resolved quickly cheaply without going to court and I'm hoping some younger people who are watching this will you know take over for people like me and me and and to work on some of these issues right and so so that you know and and those are you know great you know advances that we've made because it expands it expands the the the the scope of the remedies that are available and what it does is it allows people to resolve their problems quickly without spending a whole lot of money it kind of puts people on an even playing field well I I want first of all to tell everybody who's watching this that the person who has done the most is Jane Sugimura the the person who's taking charge here today and on think tech Hawaii and I hope that you'll be able to continue to do it but also this people will step forward and show interest in making fairness in condo living a reality well thank you for for the endorsement and you know we've run out of time and we thank people for joining us and next week I'm going to have somebody I have a representative from the mediation center of the Pacific and there they do that of mediation of condominium disputes and so I hope you tune in next week and her name is Katie Rainey and she will be my guest next week on condo insider the show for condo living thank you very much for joining us and good afternoon