 Thanks so much for joining us on Think Tech Hawaii. And if you like what we do, please go to the website, click the donate button. If you can, anything and everything helps keep these conversations going because we're all here to serve. And that's what we're here for. And today for that service, we have the really special honor of having with us Tracy Wilkin, who for years has been the head of the Mediation Center of the Pacific, formerly the Neighborhood Justice Center. One of the leading community mediation centers in the country. And I know that from personal experience, not only with ours and hers here, but with others in many other areas of the country, cutting edge in so many ways, including in the eviction and other key housing issues, the use of mediation, the use of collaborative processes in people to bring about resolution by agreement rather than by conflict and litigation and all of the things that can be so divisive and destructive. Tracy, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Chuck, for having me. Happy to be here today. So what do people need to understand about why eviction as a key element of the housing crisis in Hawaii is a problem that really can and really needs to be addressed now in ways that you are bringing to the table. Well, as we all know, Chuck, eviction is destructive to everyone, not just the tenants. Obviously when a tenant is evicted, they may not be able to find another place to live. So they may end up living on the street. If they're evicted and they have Section 8, they lose that forever. When landlords evict tenants, oftentimes the tenants are desperate to move out and the place is not left necessarily in good clean condition. So therefore it costs the landlord more to clean up the place. In evictions, it takes landlord and tenant going to court, which oftentimes the tenant isn't going to show up because if they're behind on their rent, they know that they haven't paid their rent and so they don't even show up. So the landlord is highly unlikely to get any of the back rent, much less know how much time it's going to take for them to re-rent the place. So there's a lot of cost involved on both sides for landlord and tenant. And I want to add, when you think about when tenants are evicted, it's not just about the tenant being evicted, it's finding another place to live quickly, oftentimes requiring move their children out of school, taking time off from their jobs, so losing more of their income and their ability to find the appropriate place to live. All that creating stress on the family, on the kids, so there is a lot of harm that comes for both landlord and tenant through the eviction process. And that's why we really encourage landlords and tenants to mediate early. So we'd like to change the culture and the mindset. We know that already there's an inherent power imbalance between the landlord and tenant relationship. Not that it's intended, it's just a fact of life. You have a tenant who's dependent on paying rent. Oftentimes there's not a relationship between the two. And as long as the tenant's paying rent and being a good tenant, keeping the property in good repair and the landlord is getting their rent on time, it's a happy relationship. But when a tenant for whatever reason starts getting behind, maybe they're sick, maybe they've lost their job, maybe they had to take time off from their job to care for a child or another family member, they're often afraid to approach their landlord to say, hey, I'm behind or I'm going to be behind. So instead, they don't say anything, which of course ticks the landlord off when they don't get their payment, and it becomes a vicious cycle. But through mediation and encouraging this culture change of conversation with landlord and tenant coming to the table in an informal environment of mediation and being able to have these conversations with the assistance of an impartial mediator who isn't taking sides, but is helping each of them get their story out and helping them negotiate payment plans to pay what's owed and make sure that the tenant can pay the rent moving forward. So I'll stop because I know you have questions or I could go on and on because this is a really important topic. And that could easily let you go on and on because we could go well beyond our half hour with this and still be going strong. But one of the questions that comes to mind and you've touched on so many direct and indirect impacts on both landlords and the property owners, there may have property managers. These are people who are affected individually as well as in their professional worlds. Their life is affected, their work is affected, their mental, emotional health is affected, their kids and their school relationships and activities are affected, their families and their transportation and work relationships are affected and for landlords as well and property owners and property managers, this is really, really disruptive to them too. At a time when none of us can afford these things. We're still in recovery mode here. So what do this program, what do mediators bring to the table that's of special value here that the courts and the litigation and all the adversarial partisan stuff does not? Well, the key word is what you just said. Our courts, it's an adversarial system. That's just the way courts are created. So it's about winning and losing. It's about proving that the other person is wrong. And of course, in a landlord tenant matter and eviction case, it's the landlord saying the tenant hasn't paid. The tenant owes me money and under landlord tenant law when the tenant doesn't pay, they have the right to evict them. And if a tenant hasn't paid or is behind on their rent, they know they're wrong. And so it's pretty clear cut. And as I mentioned earlier, that's why 50% of the eviction cases, the tenants don't even show up at court because they know I'm going to be evicted. So why should I go to this very imposing adversarial system and have to face the landlord? And most of the time, tenants are ashamed. Nobody wants to be behind in their rent. And just like I need to say, no landlord wants to evict their tenant. So it's not a happy process from many perspectives. The difference in mediation is multiple. First of all, it's informal. It's not a structured process. It's set up at a damn time that works for both landlord and tenant. We offer mediation both in person and via Zoom. And for tenants or landlords, because there are a lot of mom and pop landlords who may not have access to the appropriate equipment for Zoom, they can come into the Mediation Center of the Pacific and use our equipment. And I'm going to say, interestingly, after the moratorium, so back during COVID, there was a moratorium on evictions. And when that moratorium was lifted, the legislature put into effect Act 57 for one year. And that required tenants and landlords to mediate. And after that one year, it was really interesting because the feedback that we got and through a study conducted by Hawaii Apple Seed, it was learned that tenants felt much more comfortable mediating via Zoom. Because that way they could be there, but they didn't have to be in the same room with the landlord or they didn't have to pass by the landlord like they might have to at court because they feel intimidated. And again, they're embarrassed. The other important thing about participating via Zoom is they could have their camera off, so they didn't have to be seen. And so they felt a lot more comfortable. They could be in their own home or at an organization that they are familiar with. So just creating a more comfortable setting. When we set up mediations, we have, if English is not somebody's primary language, we have an interpreter over the phone who talks about how mediation is going to work and how to prepare. Now, I do understand that when somebody goes to court and English isn't their primary language, they can request an interpreter. But here we have an interpreter over the phone helping them set up and talk about mediation. And then of course, we have an interpreter in the mediation to help them through the process. So there's a lot of things that are done to help create a more comfortable setting. I'm not going to say it's fun, but it certainly is less intimidating and less stressful than court. And then the other important thing, it's not an adversarial setting. It's about having a conversation. And so in private meetings, the mediator meets privately, each with tenant and landlord. The mediator learns from the tenant, what's going on? What happened? How is it that you weren't able to pay your rent? So they find out the backstory of the tenant. Similarly, they find out the landlord situation. I really worked with this tenant. So I'm really disappointed that they stopped paying or I really gave the tenant the benefit of the doubt or I don't trust this tenant because I feel like they're taking advantage. And so when they get these stories and start sharing it, they humanize each landlord and tenant. And then the landlord recognizes through the mediator that the tenant really was doing their best to try and make sure they were paying the rent. From there, the mediator starts helping them negotiate. Can they negotiate a realistic agreement? Can there be a realistic payment plan where the landlord gets their background? And going forward, can the tenant be able to pay the rent and keep current moving forward? And if not, then they could negotiate as an alternative a move out, but now they have more time. It's done in a respectful way. It gives the tenant time to find a place to live. It gives the landlord the time to strategize if they wanna make repairs when they're gonna advertise. They could already start looking for new tenants and be prepared to have somebody move in. So they're not losing as much money with the tenant gone and still trying to find a new tenant. So through the mediation process, it's a really a different approach. Once it's in court, it's about when you move in out tenant, but when it's in early mediation, there's more discussions about payment plans and working things out. And so it is a lot less stressful for both tenant and landlord as well. And I wanna go back to Act 57 because that was really a groundbreaking program and it was statewide, every mediation center, there's five mediation centers throughout the state ran that early eviction mediation program in response to the ending of the moratorium on eviction. And it was amazing. And that program showed the value of early mediation because Chuck, there was an 87% rate of agreement amongst the cases. So there was 1,660 landlord tenant cases that reached agreement going through mediation and 90% of those agreements resulted in the tenant staying in the residence. So that fact alone shows the importance and the value of early mediation. I'll give you a chance to ask questions so I don't keep talking. No, I think, well, two things that shows, one, if you give people a chance to communicate civilly, responsibly and safely in a context in which they're comfortable, they can begin to see each other and deal with each other as human beings. Something more complete than just is the rent paid or numbers on a table or a piece of paper. They can start to see that tenant and their family. Maybe the kids are in the background or the pets or whatever. And it's just, it's a different kind of relationship and communication that's offered. The other thing exactly, as you pointed out, the return on that investment, that opportunity for the people to communicate as responsible human beings, the level and extent of success, the human success, the way in which it improves choices and lives for people is incredibly great. I mean, if you look at what the funding for Act 57 was and the number of cases that it took in and resolved, what was the funding for Act 57? Approximately? The approximate funding was approximately $1.2 million. Okay. And you dealt with over 1,600 cases with a close to 90% resolution keep the people in their homes rate. So we're talking about serving somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,300, 1,400 plus people. You pencil that out. That's a pretty small expense for the return on an investment because the real return, the human return that we're hearing here is that both of those human beings came out far better in far less time at far less cost than any other process, any other communication form could have made possible. That's what you're doing. You're offering responsible human communication for people with an incredibly generous return on investment for doing that. Yeah, absolutely. And so based on that success, the hope is that we can have another statewide program that will encourage early mediation between landlords and tenants so that we can have that same success rate and keep tenants housed, which increases housing stability for the entire state. And that's why there's a bill right now in the legislature. It's House Bill 2642, which is promoting a statewide early eviction mediation program. And the idea is to run the program for a year and look at the statistics to determine whether a program like this should be a permanent program. And so it's a really important bill and an important program. And I wanna add, I know that part of the success of the Act 57 early eviction mediation program was the fact that there were very robust rental assistance programs that help tenants or actually help tenants pay back the landlords for the rent that was owed. And while there currently aren't the large rental assistance programs that were in existence then early landlord tenant mediation still works. There are some smaller rental assistance programs which are helpful. But I also wanna note that because of the positive response and the positive outcomes to the Act 57 program, over the last year in 2023, the Mediation Center of the Pacific on Oahu continued offering early mediation through the support of private funders and grants because we saw the momentum, we saw the value. And so even though it wasn't required, so not every landlord was willing to participate. And even though there weren't the large rental assistance programs that were in existence during Act 57, we still had a 67% rate of agreement with these early landlord tenant cases that were mediated. So I think that that, not I think, I know that those numbers speak for themselves that it goes back to what we were saying earlier. It's changing the culture and the mindset and getting people to sit down early and have a conversation before a tenant is in deep debt and owes so much money that there's just no way they can pay it back. And it's just obviously not in the landlord's interest to keep trying to work with a tenant when they need to pay their own bills. So I just wanna bring those important points out. And so what kind of funding are you looking at for the one year program? This is actually where I got the 1.2 million. So for this program, it's 1.2 million. And it was actually a much larger amount for the Act 57 program because we don't anticipate the high numbers that we saw for Act 57 because there was a moratorium on evictions at the time. So the numbers were much higher. Now that being said, I wanna bring out two points. One, it's currently the number of evictions are much higher. They're more than double than prior to COVID. And this is another reason why this program is important. And then I wanna take us to Maui looking at that situation as well. Clearly with the horrific wildfires, there is a moratorium currently in Maui on evictions to help tenants. And there's gonna be a similar concern when that moratorium ends that there's going to be a high number of evictions. So there is a separate bill that's going through the legislature right now to support a program. It's almost identical to the Act 57 program for Maui so that once that moratorium ends, tenants and landlords will be required to participate in mediation. With that bill, they have a little bit longer period of time to schedule the mediation. And so that is a very important bill. And I encourage everyone to support both bills. We know Maui needs that support, but also statewide landlords and tenants need the support of an early eviction mediation program. You know, and that's a really, really important insight and point Tracy, because we know at least recent figures have indicated that over 5,000 residences were destroyed or so severely damaged that they were uninhabitable. And there are consequences of that. That's over 5,000 families that are displaced. We also know that the temporary six month housing that were obtained through hotels and vacation rentals and things like that, that's expiring. The six month window from early August 2023 to early February is coming up. Will those get extended? We know that the state is scrambling to try to find housing for, we're looking at a large portion of those 5,000 plus people. So it's a huge and urgent problem. How does that connect with what's going on in housing and affordability and housing needs here on a larger scale? So that is really important because we know that the inventory is limited and rents have gone up. So it is much harder for tenants when they get evicted to find another affordable place to live. So keeping tenants in their residence and making sure landlords are paid is really critical to housing stability in Hawaiian on every island and certainly on Maui right now because the resources are very limited. So if this could come together, both the Maui and the statewide program, what do you see as benefits both for the landlords and for the community for the state, Maui and the state? That's a really great question. I think the benefits are huge if we can have landlords and tenants mediating early on every island and getting resolutions. One is gonna be keeping them out of court. It gives the landlords their money. It keeps tenants housed. That's huge because there's many other things going on and it's a relatively inexpensive program when you compare the cost of housing and trying to move families and trying to find housing for families and the court system, which is really back, I don't wanna say backlog, they're not backlog because they're very efficient in handling the cases but they have a high volume of cases. And so these two programs that are supported by these two bills that are currently in the legislature are extremely valuable for housing stability in Hawaii. And I would encourage everyone to support them because we've seen the success. It isn't a guesswork or a possibility. We have seen the program work successfully and it just made a huge difference. And if there isn't an agreement reached, they still have the option of going to court. It's not taking that eviction process away but it's giving them an opportunity. And I have to say that most people, even though mediation, the word and the process is very popular, it's in the forefront, but most people don't think about using mediation early and certainly tenants with many other things going on in their lives, they're struggling to put food on the table for their families and to keep their kids in school and help their kids learn and all the other important things that are going on. They don't think about mediation and when they don't understand what it is, it's a scary thing because they think it's like going to court. And when we had the Act 57 program, a large percentage of the tenants who participated in the mediation process reported they'd never been in mediation before, but after going through it, they thought it was a really good process. So just encouraging people and requiring people to participate and giving them that opportunity to work through these issues is huge. So I think you've identified a couple of things here that really deserve emphasis as we get to our last couple of minutes or so. Is one is that if you want manageable outcomes, manageable solutions, you have to have manageable communications. Yes. And in order for them to be manageable, they have to be collaborative, they have to be civil, they have to be private, confidential, safe. Mediation offers all of those and it's the only form. Court does not, even arbitration and other adversarial processes do not. The other thing I wanted to ask you about as we approach the end of our time here, we know that some other areas in other states and in other cities have done some eviction mediation work. Some areas in Illinois, some areas in Florida, some areas in Ohio and some others, some cities like San Francisco. What is it that Hawaii's doing that has made it such a cutting edge leader in eviction and housing mediation that everybody looks to for the model? Because we are the first or practically the only who do it early. The other programs are wonderful programs, but it's once an eviction process is filed, we're doing it before. And I want to add last, one last very important piece, I know we're almost out of time. So when landlords and tenants end up in court, not only is the landlord now who's evicting the tenant going after their back rent or requesting their back rent, but they're also requesting attorney's fees from the tenant. So the tenants already behind and now they owe attorney's fees as well. So the whole is even deeper. With this early mediation program, both parties will pay their own attorney's fees if they're represented. If the tenant defaults on an agreement or there is no agreement and they end up in go to court, then the landlord can still request attorney's fees. So that's huge. It's reducing that possibility of a bigger debt. So I wanted to add that piece in because it is very important. No, and I think it's a really, really important insight to focus on as we wrap up here. That it's clear that for tenants who are in a hole, landlords who are in a hole with these financial conflicts, to offer them adversarial partisan litigation is like offering a guy in a hole a shovel to solve it with. It just gets deeper. The expense goes higher. The antipathy, the antagonism gets higher. It's not either pleasant or productive for anyone. You're offering a manageably pleasant, productive, safe, confidential process. You're offering people a chance to work things out as human beings. And if ever there were anywhere where the culture favors that, being mostly Asian Pacific, this has to be that place. Tracy, thanks so much. Any last words you'd like to share with us about why this is critical now? Don't wait for next year. Don't put it off for funding excuses. Because we have good momentum going and it's important for landlords and tenants to talk early and negotiate and stay out of court because it's not helpful to anyone and go and support the bills. Thanks, Chuck, for the opportunity. And thank you too. And I wanted to finish with one other really important point that you made here, which is do it now because everybody is ready for this. Financially, mentally, emotionally, they're ready for this. They have shown they can make this work. This is not an experimental pilot project that hasn't been tested yet. We don't need to send it out for studies. We know it works. We're simply asking, give it a chance. House Bill 2642 and the Maui Bill. Please, folks, call your representative, call your senator, get behind it, help people who need help. Take care. Aloha, thanks for joining us.