 This is State Tech Hawaii, Community Matters Here. Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of Condo Insider. My name is Jane Sugimura and I'm your host today. Condo Insider is the show relating to condo living and we deal with issues that are near and dear to those people who live and work in condos and I have to hear with me today very special guests from the Mediation Center of the Pacific. I have Katie Rainey. Katie is, she's the special programs director for the center and I have Nathan Nikaito who I've known for a real long time and he's the manager, Mediation Manager for the center. Thank you for being on our show today. Thank you for having us on. Thanks for having us. Katie, are you just graduated from college? I graduated with my master's, yeah, just like a couple years ago. I got a master's in communication at UH Manoa as well as a graduate certificate in conflict resolution. So I was studying about mediation facilitation and different conflict resolution techniques. And now you're the special programs director for the Mediation Center of the Pacific? Yeah, special programs coordinator, yes. Tell us about what the center does. The center does so much. So we help other people to talk through their problems so that they can negotiate a solution for themselves. Our mediators are there to help other people find the solution that they can't themselves because they're too emotional about what's going on or their dispute has been going on for so long that they feel like there's no way out and then they come to our center and we mediate. We have impartial mediators who are trained for this type of communication skills and also depending on the case specific content information about Islam, that sort of a thing. And they help the parties in dispute resolve their conflicts. And so where is the center located? We're on 245 North Kukui Street in Honolulu, we're just on the edge of Chinatown. Okay, and so if somebody wanted to use your services, what would they do? Would they pick up the phone and call you, go online? Can they reach you through their website? They can call us. So our number is 521-6767. And we will be scrolling that throughout the show. It'll be scrolling on the screen so that people want to call you. You also have a website, right? We do have a website and you can learn more about the types of cases as well as we have a few training programs. So if you'd like to learn better communication skills for resolving conflict in the workplace, we have a mediation skills for managers, one-day workshop, as well as a basic mediation training that takes you through those steps if you want to apply that into your own life. Okay, and if somebody wanted to use your services, do they have to pay anything? That really depends on the type of case that's going through, but all of our cases have a sliding scale fee based on household income. So if you're not able to afford it, we work with you to make sure that whatever gets charged, you'd actually be able to afford. And in fact, with condo disputes, you do have a subsidy program. We do. We are partially subsidized by the Real Estate Commission. And this is the state of Hawaii? Yes, right, yeah. And the money comes from something called the Kondo Ed Fund? Yes. And the Kondo Ed Fund is funded by people who live in condos. And for you people out there who are listening to this program, you may not know it, but your maintenance fees every other year are used to fund the Kondo Ed Fund. And your association gets billed by the state of Hawaii based on your, the number of units. And I was very shocked because when this started over 20 years ago, it was a dollar and a quarter per unit per, every other year, by any of them. And I found out that in 2000, and it's every odd year, so it would have been 2017, it was $10 per unit. You do the math and those of you living out there, that means $10 per unit. So if you live in a 300 unit building, your association every other year writes a check for $3,000 to the state of Hawaii for Kondo education. And that money is used to educate boards of directors and owners of condos and to provide funding for dispute resolution, which is used in the mediation program that your center offers, right? Yes, yeah. Correct. And let's talk about Kondo disputes because, you know, people who have disputes who live in condos, I mean, I think it's a special type of situation because you're living in the same building that you're fighting with people, right? Whether it's another unit owner or resident or whether it's the board of directors or the managing agent, right? I mean, and it's very uncomfortable for this dispute to go on. And, you know, and some people think that, oh, well, we got to sue that person. We got to sue the board. We got to sue the managing agent. And the whole program under the Kondo law is set up so that you don't go to court. You don't have to get an attorney. And so can you explain what you have more than one type of mediation that you offer for Kondo disputes? Yeah. So I really want to re-emphasize what you were saying is that with Kondo disputes, you can't really walk away because the dispute is where you're living. So it really needs to get resolved as quickly as possible. And mediation is one of those resources that's most effective the earlier you do it. So once a dispute kind of starts, just go to mediation and really talk it out. They can pick up the phone and just call you. Yep, exactly. That number 521-6767 that you told us earlier. They can just pick up the phone and call you and somebody will walk them through the process. Yep, they get transferred to our client services who are very wonderful people. They ask them a few questions about the issues that are coming up, some demographic information, as well as the contact information for the other people. The client services contacts everyone else who is involved in that dispute to tell them about the mediation and then to schedule a time that really works for you. Our office is open Monday through Friday. We do mediation at 9 a.m. and at 1 p.m. We schedule about a three-hour block for them. And then we do have some Saturdays free as well, so we can work within your schedule. And I think you mentioned a website earlier. Do you have the website address? Yeah, so it's www.mediatehawaii.org. Okay, and that's where people, if they want to go online and look at your website and find out what kind of services you offer and who they can contact. And there's information on that website. Yes, yes. And you guys listening, it's really important that you do this. I mean, you don't have to get a lawyer, you don't have to go to court. If you have a dispute with your neighbor, with the board, with a managing agent, I mean, the Mediation Center of the Pacific is a resource for you to go to. And if you do the evaded mediation, the state of Hawaii will subsidize a portion of that expense. Yeah, so there are two different approaches to mediating condo disputes. So we have the facilitative approach and then we have the evaluative approach. Why don't you tell us what the difference is? Sure. So with the facilitative approach, it's really, they use a lot of the same skills where it's active listening, reflecting, asking very pertinent questions and trying to help the parties come to negotiate their own solution. The way that that evaluative differs from the facilitative approach. Well, when you're with facilitative mediation, when you're talking about, you know, you have a mediator, are the people in the same room? Because sometimes it's very uncomfortable if you're having a dispute with somebody to be in the same room. And so, you know, it's hard for them. I mean, if I was having a fight with my neighbor, I don't think I'd want to be talking while that neighbor was in the room with me and the mediator. And that's perfectly fine. We can set up a system if the dispute is too untenable. They can enter at different times and never see each other. We can keep them in separate rooms and the mediators will go back and forth between the two of them. So you never have to see the other side that you're fighting with? If you don't want to, you don't have to. If you are a little bit more amicable, it's maybe at the beginning and you're still ready to talk. We can have you in the same room, but then there'll also be time during the mediation where the mediator will talk with one person and then the other so that something that maybe is part of the dispute that you don't want the other person to know, you can share it with the mediator. And then the mediator will ask you at the end of that private session, is there anything that I can't share with the other party? And if there's something that you really don't want them to know, the mediator won't tell them and they'll be able to work it out anyway. So how is the evaluative mediation different from the facilitative mediation? The evaluative approach uses another tool. It uses the tool of evaluation. So the mediator in that case is very familiar with condo case law, with condominium law and is able to assess the cases of the parties involved and give a mediator proposal or a mediator evaluation that assesses the strength of each of the parties' cases. If this were to go to court, what the judge might say and offer some alternatives for that. And with the evaluative mediation, the center has trained certain people to act as neutrals in those evaluative mediation cases, haven't they? Yes, we have a cadre of mediators who are very, very familiar with condominium law. And I know some of the neutrals that have been trained for evaluative mediation are condominium attorneys. Some of them are, yes. Right. And so these are people who know what the law is. Absolutely. They know what the law is. This is what they do in their professional careers. So basically what you're saying is with evaluative mediation, let's say you have a dispute with your board and we're talking about a provision in their bylaw about documents. Let's say they wanted some board minutes. Yeah. And for some reason the board just wouldn't give it to them. And so here we are, we're fighting about documents and the statute does say an owner can have documents and if certain types of documents, I mean they can look at them for free. If they want copies they have to pay a reasonable charge. I mean the statute and it goes into different documents, even employment agreements you can see. Yeah. And so now you've got a unit owner and they're fighting with their board. So you have an attorney who is very knowledgeable in these areas and he basically listens to both sides and he says, you know, you've got a good case and he'll go to the other side and he says, you've got a crappy case. Right? It's not so many words. Right. But that's basically it. Right. And so if you're the person who gets an opinion from a lawyer saying, you know, you've got a really crappy case and if you decide to go further with this, you're probably going to lose. It's going to cost you a ton of money. I mean, so that's what happens in evicted mediation, right? And when somebody gets an opinion, it's easier to kind of bring people together and in my hypothetical, maybe in that case, the board would just say, hey, you know, it's not worth our time to fight this. Let's just give them the documents, which the statute says they're entitled to have anyway. Yeah. So, yeah, in cases like that, the mediator would act as sort of an agent of reality and say that if the statutes are very clear that this is what's required of you and you're not doing it. So how do you think your case is going to go with that? Here are some other alternatives that you could do. And, yeah, it ends up being resolved without having to go through any sort of court process. And, yeah. And that was the whole intent of the evaluative. Yeah. It's like if you get an expert or, you know, somebody who knows what they're talking about or has been trained to know the law and the procedures, and so they're going to say you're right and you're wrong. And without, you know, saying, you know, coming to any kind of conclusion, they're saying, well, you know, if you want to pursue this, you've got a hard case, you know, wrote to whole because, you know, you're missing this element and this element and this element, and the other side's got a better case than you. So, you know, it kind of, if I heard something like that, I think I'd want to settle the case rather than spend time and expense trying to fight it. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, and I think that was a whole theory of, you know, requiring people to do evaluative mediation. Yeah. And it definitely is a reality check to say that the case that you have right now is on shaky ground. There's not a lot of law and there's not a lot of precedence that will support it. So, if you were to go to court, it probably, you probably would not get the result that you think that you're going to. You're not going to be as successful as you think you are. So, other options would be better to pursue at that point. Okay, you know, we're getting to the halfway point. So, we're going to take a one-minute break now and when we come back, we're going to talk about some stories. Sure. Stories about, you know, things that you guys deal with on a day-to-day basis to share with our listening audience so that, you know, they might, you know, feel that, hey, that's something that, you know, I could use. So, anyway, when we come back for our break, we're going to talk about some stories that, you know, will reflect what you guys do on a day-to-day basis at the Center. Yeah. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. When I was growing up, I was among the one in six American kids who struggled with hunger. But with the power of breakfast, the kids in your neighborhood can think big and be more. Go to hungarees.org to make breakfast happen for kids in your neighborhood. If you're not in control of how you see yourself, then who is? Live above the influence. Hi, I'm Dave Stevens, the host of Cyber Underground every Friday here at 1 p.m. on ThinkTechHawaii.com. And then every episode is uploaded to the Cyber Underground. That library of shows that you can see of mine on YouTube.com. And I hope you'll join us here every Friday. We have some topical discussions about why security matters and what could scare the absolute bejesus out of you. If you just try to watch my show all the way through. Hope to see you next time on Cyber Underground. Stay safe. Yeah, go into it. Okay, welcome back to Kondo Insider. And we have, as our guests today, Katie Rady and Nathan Nikaito from the Mediation Center of the Pacific. And Nathan, who is the mediation manager, is going to tell us about some of the types of mediation that Kondo, Kondo dispute mediation, that the center deals with. And, you know, if you could tell us about some cases that are covered by facilitated mediation and some by the evaluated mediation process so that our listening audience can kind of get an idea of the kind of dispute you guys handle and how you handle them. Sure, thanks for asking, Jane. Basically, as it relates to condominium cases, issues that are covered under the Kondo statutes, 514AMB, would be available to be subsidized by the state. The other criteria they have is the ALL must be registered. ALL is not registered. That subsidy program is not available to be used. Normally, the owners or the ALL has the choice of either facilitative or evaluative mediation, but in evaluative mediation, since the upfront costs are a little more. In facilitative cases, for the owner, the fees are on a sliding scale. I believe the Kondo share, the ALL's share would be a flat $250. For evaluative cases, each side must agree that they're going to first use evaluative mediation. They must agree on the evaluative mediator to be used, and they'll each pay for an initial hour of mediation, $375. Whatever is above that, if the preparation time and mediation last longer than two hours, that is where the subsidy will pick up the balance. That means that if it goes longer than that for two hours, that means that the state of Hawaii will write the check to the mediation center for the parties. Correct. What kind of disputes come to your center? There's a wide gamut of condominium disputes that range from unequal enforcement of house rules to the board is not like you already mentioned with Katie providing me the documents I'm asking for. And unequal enforcement. That's where the president, where the president maybe parks in a 15-minute stall for two hours, and everybody knows it's a president's car. He doesn't get a ticket. But you park in there for 25 minutes, and all of a sudden you got a notice of violation. This unequal enforcement, that's got to be the number one, gripe that people seem to... And they all know. I've heard from condominium office, how do they know I'm the president? Well, duh. I think they kind of know who it is. Why don't the security people give that ticket a car? Because it's been there for two hours, and it turns out it belongs to a board member. And that kind of stuff does not sit right with most people and it shouldn't. It shouldn't make any difference. Whether you're a board member, the president, or the guy who owns a studio apartment, everybody gets treated the same. The rules have to be applied equally to everybody. And so when they aren't, that's the one, that's when they come to you guys, right? We have other issues such as whether improvements that the owner made were approved by the AOA board. Sometimes there are issues like squeaky floors. Upstairs neighbor has installed flooring that the downstairs neighbor's feeling makes too much noise. There are... That's got to be one of the harder ones, the squeaky floor ones. And so have you been involved in any of those types of... Not me personally. But the squeaky floor has come more than once. That's one of the, maybe I should say more frequent, but it has come multiple times for radiation. And I think what people don't understand is when you move into a condo, you kind of give up some rights. And sometimes if you're real sensitive to noise, maybe you shouldn't live in a condominium because you're living in very close quarters to other people. And I think you have to expect some level of noise. I mean, when it gets out of hand and gets very loud, where it interferes with your sleeping and your living there, then I can see maybe getting upset. But I think they have to be a little bit tolerant because it comes with the territory because you're living so close to each other. One of the things that mediation is really good for is that if you were to just let it go and just have this annoyance come at you and it says over and over and over again and then it builds up and builds up, and you're not really thinking about what's happening on the other side. You don't know if they know that their floor is squeaky or if they made an improvement that is something for them that they really need for them to live right, either changing the floor or whatever else other accommodations that they've made. And you may not know that. And you just let that annoyance build up. It's going to explode at the end. So if you mediate when you're... and you actually try to resolve the dispute when it's first coming up, after the first couple of times when you're saying, oh, my gosh, it's happening again. They keep making the noise, keep squeaking. It's so squeaky, right? If you try to resolve it at that point, you're much more likely to actually come to a resolution and find out something that will work for both of you. And then the annoyance will stop after that or you'll find some way to really work it out. Right. And you know, one of the things that... the reason why you guys are here, because I have... there's a method to my madness. I am just so upset. There was a case recently in Maui and some of you may have read about it in a newspaper. $1.9 million lawsuit where the association was hit with a judgment. This is a squeaky floor. A squeaky floor case. And what happened is a unit owner is a disabled person, a blind person. And he got permission to put in wood floors so that he could maneuver his way around his unit. And it was the unit below who complained about the tapping. Okay? And that's when the board started trying to tell him no, he had to remove his wood floors. And you know, what gets involved here is you have a person with a disability. And so that is covered by fair housing which says that the association has to make reasonable accommodations. So that means that if a person is disabled and he has to have a cane and a wood floor allows him to maneuver in his unit, then you know, the association's going... I mean, that's a reasonable accommodation. I don't know how you tell them. Oh, no, you can't have a wood floor. You're going to have to put carpeted floors and I don't know how you maneuver. But you know, I think the issue in that case is we found out that that case, none of the attorneys knew about this mediation program that's in the condominium statute. Nobody knew about it. I'm thinking, but that, you know, that has got to change. And so you people listening out there, you don't want to go into a courtroom to resolve your dispute. You want to use places like the Mediation Center of the Pacific who will do facilitative or evasive mediation and some of it is subsidized and you don't want to go into a courtroom because that case took three years. And I think the association ended up finding the unit owner $200 a day and it went up to almost 67 days. So it was a huge amount. And they were going to foreclose on his unit. And for those of you who think that your case isn't important enough, there's an insurance company that ensures most of the condominiums in town, in the state, insurance associates and its owner is Sue Savio. Sue Savio tells me that there are two, maybe three, carriers, D&O carriers in the state of Hawaii. And because of these claims, and Hawaii has got more claims than California, New York and Florida, all those states with huge condominium communities, Hawaii has more claims. And so our insurance is more expensive. So even though that lawsuit happened in Maui, she tells me that all of us are going to be effective and that's why we got to keep these lawsuits out of the courts. We have to find some way to resolve them without going into a courtroom because it ends up, because if our insurance goes up, guess who pays it? The people who own the units. So that means your maintenance fees are going to go up. Even if you weren't involved in a lawsuit, it's because all these other people who didn't know about mediation decided, oh no, I'm going to hire a lawyer and I'm going to sue the association and get my pound of flesh. And in the end, all of us end up paying more money to live in a condominium. You do a very simple calculation, right? Mediations are measured in hours, whereas the lawsuits are measured in years. If anybody balks at maybe $375 for an evaluative mediation, if you think about the $1.9 million that might happen in court, it doesn't seem that much anymore. And I understand that the plaintiff, the disabled person in his wife, their attorney's fees were over $900,000. I mean, and those numbers are just mind-boggling and you figure how did it get to this point? I mean, and when I heard about it, I just shook my head. I said, you know, we're not doing a really good job in getting this information out about mediation. So that's why you guys are here. That's why you guys are here because, and that's why I'm imploring the people who are watching this show and who listen to us that you need to think about mediation and arbitration to resolve your dispute because you don't want it to fester. It doesn't get better, it gets worse, and it gets more expensive. So bite the bullet, call the Mediation Center of the Pacific, ask them about their programs, and like I said, they're very cost-effective and the evaluative mediation is subsidized by your maintenance fees. So, you know, and tell your friends and neighbors because we don't want to see any more lawsuits about things that could have been resolved early on by mediation at a reduced cost. One more point to put in that's important. Those fees that we were talking about, they only apply if the mediation takes place to open the case for us to contact the other party, the back and forth. If they end up saying no, they don't want to mediate, there's no fee. So a fee will only apply if the mediation actually comes together and occurs. So it doesn't cost anything to try. Yeah, there's no harm in trying. If you think that you're going to want to resolve this dispute, any dispute that you have, call in. Talk to our client services. They can tell you about whether it would be a good mediated case or if there's another resource out there that maybe you could use and really just get that process started and you won't get charged unless the mediation goes through. But then again, it is in the larger picture a very nominal fee for the mediation process itself. And it really, the basis of mediation is really on building relationships, on renewing that trust. And when you're living next door to the other person, when you're working with them, if you're on the board, it's really important for you to have a good, strong relationship and mediation really helps you to communicate better and to really rebuild that trust so you can have a long-term relationship with these people. Because you live in the same building anyway, so you've got to get along. Why can't we get along? But thank you so much, guys, for being with us on our show and for giving us the information. And for those of you listening, please put the Mediation Center of the Pacific on your resources list and please contact them if you need to do dispute resolution. And join us next week for another informative show on Condo Insider about condo living. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you.