 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Kondo Insider. Kondo Insider is the YouTube show about condominiums and people who live and work with condominiums. And I have a role. One of my hacks is president of the non-profit Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners. And for many years, I've been involved for about 30 years. But for many, many, many years. I mean, in this, the council was started by Aaron Cheney of the Cheney Brooks. A realty firm. So it's been around for over 40 years. And it's been advocating for condominiums and, you know, all that time. And now we are, you know, advocating for condominiums and 421J homeowner associations and co-ops. And those types of developments are called common interest developments, mainly because you're talking about the members of these associations who own living units. And in a condominium, the living unit would be a condominium and apartment. And for a 421J association, a membership unit might be a single family home or a townhouse. And in a co-op situation, the living unit would be an apartment lease and the member would be a shareholder. But anyway, all of these different developments are called common interest developments because what they have in common is that the members have an ownership interest in some sort of real property. And they own the in common with everybody else in the development. Certain portions of the real estate, like the hallways, the elevators, the swimming pool, the parking garage. These are all called common elements. In other words, you have a partial interest in them because you own a unit in the development. So anyway, in the legislature this year, there was a bill called House Bill 1509 and that was passed into law and now it's Act 189. And what it dealt with was common interest developments. And what it does is it basically deals with the 421J planned community associations. And these would be the townhouses and single family residences that are located. And mainly, most of them are located on the west side out in Eva, in the Eva Plains, you know, where you've got all that new development out of Mililani. And so these are the 421J community development planned community associations. And that's the statute that governs that one is 421J. And what we've been hearing, you know, from a lot of HOA members over the years is, you know, how come we don't have subsidized mediation? How come we can't do RICO claim? And RICO is something called Regulated Industries Complaint Office Claims. And what that means is that if you're a condominium, then you have certain rights because the condominiums are regulated by a government agency called the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and the real estate commission. And the condominiums are registered, they pay an annual fee, and the annual registration fee, I think it's paid every two years. And they have something called a condo and that money goes into something called a condo education fund. And some of that money, you know, can be used, you know, to pay to educate, to pay for seminars. And it is also available to subsidize mediation that is used to resolve disputes between the owners and the boards. That's something that, you know, is very useful to owners and associations because this means that, you know, it is the people who are hired to act as neutrals. They're the ones who, you know, assist the two parties to discuss the dispute through a process called mediation. And the neutral mediator, you know, tries to assist both sides to come to some solution that might not make either side very happy, but at least they can live with the decision that they've made. And the mediator is paid for by the condo ed fund. And people and members who live in 421J, I mean, they kind of heard about it and they want to know how come they don't, you know, how come they can't, you know, when they do mediation, because they can do mediation. But they have to pay out of their pockets for the neutral mediator. They're saying how come the condo people can get subsidized mediation and we can't. And, you know, how come, you know, the condo people have rights under Rico. Rico is the regulated industry complaint office. And that's because the condos are regulated by the DCCA and the 421J units are not. And so that's basically in a nutshell what this bill 1509 is all about. And so two task force were set up. And the task force are supposed to be made up of community people and public officials like, you know, the people who are elected officials. And they're going to be meeting to discuss these issues. And for the 421J group, there's two task forces that are going to be set up. One is for 421J. And the other one is for 514B issues. And these task force are being set up right now. As we speak, I got an email yesterday from the DCCA saying, you know, giving me dates of available. And they asked me what dates are you available. We're trying to set up a meeting for September. And the reason why we have and you'll see is scrolling on the page. And that's our email address. And for our listeners, for our listeners, if you live in a 421J unit and you have an issue that you want this task force to discuss, you can email us. And I will make sure that, you know, because Hawaii council is a member of, I think we're going to be a member of both task force. I know we're a member of one. And we will make sure that, you know, these issues, you know, are brought to the attention of the task force who will be deliberating the issues. And then what the task force is doing is it's a two year task force to begin with. And they are going to make a report to the legislature. So it's two years. So that means that it's going to be set up maybe the first meeting will be in September. And that means the first session is going to be very short because, you know, the legislature starts in January of 2024. So we have to have a report by December for that January session if we're going to be doing any new changes, any new provisions to 421J or 514B and so that the legislature can act on it. And then because this is a two year task force, the task force will remain in effect and it will be meeting and deliberating and examining issues. You know, all of 2024 and in December of 2024, it's going to do a final report to the legislature for 2025 for the 2025 session that begins January of 2025. Okay, so let's get started on, you know, what some of the issues are going to be for 421J. As I told you, because condominiums are registered, they're required to be registered with the DCCA. And that is a government agency called as the State of Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. And they have a group called the real estate branch that is part of the DCCA. And they are the ones who have oversight over condominiums. And so, and that the real estate group also has oversight over realtors and brokers. And as many of you know, the realtors are usually the ones that are doing the property management or the managing, you know, are involved as site managers. And so, if they, if you feel that, you know, those, those parties are not behaving appropriately, I mean, you can make a claim in the DCCA, and, and they will pursue those claims for you, you know, because of the realtors are licensed by the State of Hawaii. And if you feel that they are violating terms of their license, then you can, you know, you can complain to the DCCA, and they will do an investigation. And, but right now, because the 421J units are not being regulated and, and, and the DCCA doesn't have oversight over them. They don't have that right to complain about those entities, whereas condominium members can and they do complain about the managing agents and site managers. And, you know, in the past, when we, you know, when we've brought these things, when these things have been raised, and the DCCA is at the legislative hearings, you know, they've said, oh, well, you know, we can't agree to that law because that's more work for us to do. But, you know, my, my response to that is, look, you know, if you're going to be doing registration of these entities, which would be 421J associations, then you're going to be charging them, just like you charge condominiums for their, you know, annual, bi-annual, they're called bi-annual. Every two years you, you know, we pay, you know, we pay to the, to the DC, the state of Hawaii. And, you know, when this whole thing started way back when, when the condo ed funds started for under 514B, I think the fee was, it was, it was close to a dollar. So it was a dollar a unit. So if you had a 100-unit condominium, you would be paying $100 every two years. And I hear that it's up to like $10 now. So if it's up to $10 now, that means for a 100-unit condominium, you'd be paying $1,000 every other year. And when you think about it, that's really not that expensive for the kind of work that the DCCA has to do in registering you and, you know, basically, you know, setting up, and the DCCA has these condo specialists. I think they've got three or four. And so you can call them if you have a problem, if you're a condominium owner. If you're a 421J member, you don't have that, right, or that privilege. And, but if you were registered, if you're required to be registered by the state of Hawaii, then you would, they would probably have to set up, you know, an HOA specialist to deal with 421J questions that owners and members may, you know, may ask of, you know, the DCCA. So anyway, you know, the RICO rights and remedies, in other words, you know, once the 421J people become registered, and they have, and DCCA has oversight over them, then they would be able to make complaints about their managing agents, and they would be able to make claims and, you know, get some investigation involved. And I don't think that that's going to be unduly burdensome for the DCCA because they're going to be getting paid money for the registration. And so that would allow them to hire people to do the registration, if they're complaining that, you know, there's too much work for them. And also, that money that is collected is going to be set up in a special fund. And for condominiums, that special fund is allowed to be used for subsidized mediation. So that means that if you have a dispute between an owner and a board or the board and the managing agent or, you know, whomever, you have to look at the statute, then you're entitled to use the Education Fund because it's set up for dispute resolution. It's targeted, you know, for that specific purpose, to pay for these expert mediators to try to help you in resolving your disputes. And another thing that the 514B has that 421J doesn't have is they have a very comprehensive mediation program. In fact, there's something called evaluative mediation. I mean, the 421J statute only talks about mediation generally, but the 514B statute has talks about two types of mediation, evaluative and facilitative. And facilitative just means that you have a professional meeting with both sides and trying to get the two sides to come to an agreement. And evaluative mediation requires somebody with a little bit more expertise in condo law. And this trained neutral is, his or her job is to try to get the two parties to come together with a solution that they can live with. And they get a written opinion as to the strengths and weaknesses of their relative positions. And this way, it basically says, tells you, if you're one of the parties in this mediation, that you get a lawsuit case. And if you want to go further, if you don't get it resolved in the mediation and you want to go further, like arbitration or even filing a lawsuit, then you better think twice because here you have a professional mediator. And when you do evaluative mediation, it's usually a retired judge or a retired attorney who has experience with condo law. And so if they tell you, you got a lawsuit case, I think you can take that to the bank. And you figure, okay, I better settle this now in mediation while the education fund is paying for the mediator. It's not coming out of my pocket. And so that's the value of that provision. And I think, and I know that 421J members want that. They want the subsidized mediation. And in the condo law, 514B, if you ask for evaluative mediation, the board must do evaluative mediation. They are required to do its mandatory. And if they drag their feet and they make excuses, then you take them to court to compel mediation. And the 514B, the condo statute allows you to recover up to $1,500 from the board that is dragging their feet and not mediating with you. And you're entitled to recover that. So that's a provision that they want. And there's one more final thing that is in 514B that 421J people have told me that they wanted. And in 514B, there is a statute. It comes at the very end of the law that says that an owner, a member, is protected against retaliation by the association, the board, the managing agent or the site manager. So if you feel that you as a member are being retaliated against by any of these entities, then you have a claim that you can make against them. And the statute provides for remedies. And right now, if you're a 421J member, you don't have that, but condo owners have it. It's really, that was really, really important. And unfortunately, we had a case where retaliation was the key component. And that case went to, I think it was in mediation or no, it was in litigation. It was in litigation and it was settled just before trial. And the settlement means that we don't have a court ruling on whether the homeowner, and the homeowner was the one who was claiming that he was being retaliated against because he took action. He claimed that he was a whistleblower. And then because he blew the whistle on the board, they didn't like it. You know, they retaliated against him. And that one was going to trial. But before it went to trial, it settled. And it settled for a lot of money. I think it was several hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to Civil Beat. But we don't have a ruling on it. But the fact that you can file a lawsuit for retaliation and then a settlement gets several hundreds of thousands of dollars is that at least if you think you've got a claim, you can make the claim with 421J units, you just can't do it. And so anyway, so those are some of the things that I think 421J people want. And that's one of the things that we'll be talking about in the task force. And if you, a listener, if you are a member of a 421J association and have other things that you have concerns about, please email us and we will make sure that the task force is brought to the attention of the task force. The second task force is looking at dispute resolution under 514B. And as I told you, 514B has got two types of mediation, facilitative and evaluative. And we have arbitration. But we're focusing on mediation because mediation is the one that many of the people go to. But if you look at the numbers, there aren't a whole... I think the numbers that came from the real estate commission was there were maybe... There was less than 70. There was less than 100 disputes that went through mediation. And the numbers we got, and I don't have the specific numbers with me, but half of them mediated to some resolution. And the other half did not. They never went through mediation, but the good thing was... And this was evaluated in mediation, which means that they either got a verbal or a written opinion telling them that one of them didn't have a very good case or maybe both of them didn't have a very good case because those parties didn't go further. In other words, none of those people who didn't complete mediation, none of them filed for arbitration, none of them filed a lawsuit. And I know there have been... We have had discussions about this from both sides I've heard. And there are people who said, oh, you know, mediation doesn't work. Look at that. You had almost 100 cases and half of them didn't even finish the mediation. But the good thing that came out of that is the ones that didn't complete the mediation didn't go any further. So it ended. And I think that's what everybody wants. In other words, you don't have to complete a mediation, but if you go through the mediation and for some reason it stops and you don't go any further. That means that you have resolved it because if you hadn't resolved it, then somebody, the one who's not happy with what happened, will file a lawsuit or go to arbitration. And, you know, and I think in the discussions with 514, hospital 1509, there was some discussion that they didn't think that there were some people, some folks who didn't think that the mediation program was effective. And, you know, I disagree with that. You look at the numbers. There's almost 2000 condominiums in the state of Hawaii. And, you know, and I think the population of the state of Hawaii is about a million. And so, you know, I would think that, you know, you could safely say that about a third of the people third of the population, maybe about 300 to 350 people, 300,000 people live in condominiums. Okay. So, you know, out of that, out of those thousands of people, you've got 100 people going through mediation. And of the 100, half of them resolved it by completing the mediation. The other half didn't resolve it, but they didn't go any further. I think the system's working. You know, to me, you know, if the half that didn't complete the mediation filed lawsuits, then I'd say, yeah, the system's not working, because nobody wants to end up in a lawsuit. And let me tell you, I'm a litigator, been litigating for 40 years in the state of Hawaii. And I can tell you, judges hate condominium disputes. And I get scolded. I get scolded. I mean, people, because of my advocacy, I guess, you know, the judges think I'm a public figure and they recognize that, you know, they see me on television. And, you know, I've been advocating for condominiums for all these very many years. I get scolded. I, you know, I get yelled at by judges. How come people can't get along? You know, how can you end up suing people, each other, and ending up in the courtroom? The judges, let me tell you, the judges don't like the cases. They hate both sides. Don't think you're going to get a sympathetic judge. The minute the judge finds out, it's a condo dispute. I mean, I don't know what happens. The horns go up and all of a sudden they want to, you know, rush you off to mediation or arbitration. But anyway, they want you off their docket. They don't want you in their courtroom because they think the disputes are stupid and petty and they don't understand why you have to take up public time and money to have some third party resolve your dispute, you know, for you. And so that's what I mean. You know, if you have a dispute, there is a mechanism. If you're, if you live in a condo, you can do mediation, you can do arbitration. If you do mediation, it's subsidized. And if you ask for evicted mediation and they won't do it, you can go to court, hire an attorney, go to court, and the court's going to sign that order in a heartbeat. There's not going to be, and you can recover up to $1,500, you know, from the other side who won't, who refused to participate. And, you know, so I just think that, you know, with respect to the task force for condominiums, if people want to, you know, chime in and, you know, give us examples or ideas on how to make it better. I mean, we would be happy to entertain them. I just think that the system we got in place right now is working. And it doesn't seem, you know, and, you know, with mediation, you don't need attorney. But I can't emphasize that enough. You really don't need an attorney because, you know, when you do these mediations, you know, the mediators just looking at facts and is trying to use their professional training to help you reach a result that's going to allow both of you to live with the resolution. They're not, they're not gods or, you know, geniuses, and they don't know all the answers. I mean, their job is to try to help you reach some solution that you can live with. Okay. And so that's what they're trained to do. And, you know, from all I've been hearing about the programs, it seems to be working. But I'd be happy to hear from those of you who have not had good experiences. And if you share them, we will take them to the task force. And I've gotten the information that my time is up. And so I thank you for joining us for this session of Condo Insider. I hope I've been able to pass on some information that's helpful. And I hope that you will join us next week for another episode of Condo Insider, which is a program for people who live in condos and work with condos and condo members. Thank you. And I'm a Mahalo.