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.
Efforts to organize the community association began in 1995 and were spearheaded by several people, including Mary-Lynne Ludloff and Fisiipeau Drummondo. Dorothea Pale, the association's president, became involved in organizing the association about two years ago.
Tenants Pale, Ludloff and 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 David 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.
In a lawsuit settlement with the city, Pale, Ludloff and Drummondo received $9,600.
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.
Michael 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.
Correction: Efforts to organize a community association at Kulana Nani in Kane'ohe began in 1995 and were spearheaded by several people, including Mary-Lynne Ludloff and Fisiipeau Drummondo. Dorothea Pale, the association's president, became involved in organizing the association about two years ago. A previous version of this story had incorrect information. In a lawsuit settlement with the city, Pale, Ludloff and Drummondo received $9,600. The previous version of this story gave other information.
