Tenants ensure right to organize

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http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2002/Feb/16/ln/ln06a.html

Saturday, February 16, 2002

Tenants ensure right to organize

By Eloise Aguiar

Advertiser Windward O'ahu Writer

KANE'OHE - Residents of a city-owned apartment building for low-income

people have affirmed their right to organize a tenants association and file

formal grievances, under a settlement finalized yesterday.

The action settles a lawsuit filed last year by three residents of Kulana

Nani, a 160-unit apartment tower on Kahuhipa Street, near Windward Mall.

Tenants Dorothea Pale, -Lynne Ludloff and Fisiipeau Drummondo claimed

former building management harassed them for trying to organize residents.

The purpose of organizing was to pressure management to act on their

complaints of maintenance problems, such as raw sewage leaking into a

bathroom, they said.

With the guaranteed right to organize, apartment dwellers have the power to

improve the buildings where they live, said Kathleen Hasegawa, executive

director of the Affordable Housing and Homeless Alliance.

" The precedent-setting agreement certainly affirms the rights of tenants to

organize and to not be harassed when they are organizing, " Hasegawa said.

The settlement signed by the city and the tenants yesterday includes 18

conditions that ensures tenants' rights under federal law to participate in

decisions that affect their living conditions. The settlement also applies

to West Lake Apartments in Salt Lake, another city-owned, federally

subsidized complex.

The settlement includes a grievance process, training requirements for the

management company and city agents, and a say in amendments to house rules

and major improvement projects, said Arakawa, city corporation

counsel. The city must also change the procedure it uses when hiring a

management company.

" Most of these assurances were procedures and laws which the city has always

been willing to comply with, " Arakawa said, adding that there was no

admission of liability on the part of the city with this agreement.

Pale also won a $9,600 award to repay her for rent she paid during the year

her apartment had plumbing problems. She is sharing the money with Ludloff

and Drummondo.

Pale said the agreement gives tenants leverage in dealing with the manager

of the complex, empowers tenants to lobby for changes and ensures their

rights.

The organizing effort began when Pale's children were continuously ill with

strep infections. She said she suspected a suspicious leak in her bathroom,

but numerous complaints over a one-year period to the manager yielded no

results.

Once she learned that the leak was raw sewage, she said, she got angry and

tried to organize her apartment complex to pressure the management company

at the time, Hawai'i Affordable Properties, and the city to maintain and fix

the buildings.

Cruise, Legal Aid Society of Hawaii attorney who represented the

residents, said filing the lawsuit was necessary to force the city to ensure

that its manager was complying with the law.

" The city was cooperative once the suit was filed, " he said. " It is

unfortunate that it did take the filing of a suit to get the cooperation. "

The sewage problem was just one of many documented with the buildings.

Rotting bathroom walls, dangerous windows, termites, leaking toilets and

parking that didn't comply with Americans With Disabilities Act standards

were other complaints.

The city recently finished renovation in one building of the multi-building

complex and has called for bids on work on another building.

So often the conditions of buildings are blamed on the tenants when it's

actually the management that's at fault for not maintaining the structures,

Hasegawa said.

" Unless tenants have rights to challenge that and get good management in

their buildings then they're victimized by the situation, " Hasegawa said.