Judy Tagalu swallowed tears of exasperation as she sputtered responses to a public-housing evictions board last November.

A month earlier, the board assured the 26-year-old pregnant woman that she and her two toddlers would be able to stay in their Kuhio Homes apartment as long as she cleared her unpaid rent, minus a disputed charge. Now, the three members of the board were telling Tagalu she should have paid the disputed charge and were evicting her because she hadn't.

"I'm over there with my big stomach and they wouldn't even reason with me," Tagalu said on a recent afternoon. "I didn't have anywhere to go."

After the eviction, Tagalu and her children packed up as much as they could carry from their Kalihi unit and moved into the cramped Moanalua home of a friend. In her temporary quarters, Tagalu shared a bedroom with her kids. Soon, the new baby was there, too.

Then in August, Tagalu's legal fortunes changed: A state judge ruled she should not have been evicted, and Tagalu became one of the very few ousted public-housing tenants to win a court appeal since state housing regulations instituted in 2005 speeded up evictions.

The average eviction now takes about four months, down from 18 months in 2004.

Opponents of the revised rules say the rarity of the win highlights the difficulty tenants have in representing themselves at an evictions board and the long, costly road they must take if they want to fight an eviction. They also say the state housing agency appears too hasty to make decisions under the new process, regardless of the consequences for a tenant.

Housing officials, who declined to discuss Tagalu's case specifically, counter that the streamlined eviction process provides a more equitable and efficient system for everyone, and say the handful of successful appeals is evidence the new regulations are working.

FEWER EVICTIONS

The officials said they only knew of "a couple" of evictions that have been overturned under the new regulations. Lawyers for tenants agreed.

Meanwhile, the housing agency also says tenants appear to be getting the message under the new regulations to shape up, with evictions dropping considerably from 2005.

From January through August, state housing evictions boards heard 84 cases. Of those, 62 households were evicted, and continuances were ordered in 19 cases. Three cases were thrown out. Last year, there were 133 evictions from state housing — nearly as many as the 144 evictions in 2003 and 2004 combined, the Hawai'i Public Housing Authority said.

"I wouldn't bring it (the old system) back. That's what stretched out the evictions for 18 months," said Patti Miyamoto, interim director of the Hawai'i Public Housing Authority, which oversees 5,502 units at 68 developments statewide. "It just doesn't make any sense."

Eviction proceedings against Tagalu started in October 2005. The single mother was $2,998 behind in rent. At her evictions hearing, Tagalu was told to pay off her back rent, minus $600 in dispute, within a month. But when the case was resumed in November, the board decided Tagalu owed the $600 after all and evicted her because she had not paid it, according to transcripts of Tagalu's evictions board hearings and interviews with her and her attorney.

At the second hearing, Tagalu told the board she would have come up with the amount if she knew she would be evicted.

"The first hearing we had, you guys asked me, 'Can you make the $2,400 payment by the end of October?' I said yes, I can do it and I did," Tagalu told the board, according to transcripts. "I would have scooped up $600 some way or another ... if I knew I was going to be evicted today. But that wasn't the agreement."

Attorney Stephen Laudig, who represented Tagalu in state court, says the new evictions process has forced the state housing agency to act more like a private landlord than a social service provider working with the poor. "It shouldn't be an adversarial relationship," Laudig said. "You want people to abide by the rules, but no one is there to explain the rules."

The streamlined policy was adopted after federal officials criticized the state for allowing evictions to go on for years in some cases. The new regulations did away with an internal appeals process for evictions, which allowed tenants to go before an appeals board or submit an appeal to a state housing agency administrator. The rules also said tenants must vacate the unit after being evicted, rather than staying in housing while pursuing an appeal in state court.

BOARD RETAINED

Gavin Thornton, a housing attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Hawai'i, said the regulations — based on a 2003 state law — werethe result of a compromise between the state and advocates for tenants. Originally the state proposed doing away with the evictions boards altogether.

But the advocates fought to keep the boards, saying board members were more likely to understand the myriad situations facing tenants.

Thornton said his concern with the boards — made up of volunteers from the community, housing officials and publichousing tenants — is that tenants often don't understand the allegations against them or how to represent themselves in hearings.

"Look at (eviction) proceedings. A lot of times people plead for mercy," he said, adding that about 20 public-housing tenants facing eviction have contacted Legal Aid since June.

TOO MUCH LEGALESE

Laudig, the lone attorney at Kokua Legal Services in Kalihi, said tenants who go before an evictions board are expected to understand complicated legal terms and arguments. And before they go before a board, tenants get a thick packet of documents explaining their rights and the allegations against them — little of which is in simple English, he said.

"It might as well be in Martian," Laudig said.

Miyamoto, of the housing agency, said there's no excuse for tenants not to understand the proceedings. If they do not speak English, she said, they can ask for a translator at any point in the process. "As far as representation," she added, "we are always there to help them."

Though Tagalu pursued a court appeal, she was so sure she would lose that she made plans to move to Seattle to be with her family. Even Laudig had readied her for a loss, chiefly because he has never prevailed in any of the 10 other evictions appeals he has brought against the state.

For Thornton, Tagalu's victory stirs up a compelling query: Should someone whose eviction is overturned be eligible for compensation from the state?

So far, the housing agency has not addressed the question.

And Tagalu doesn't plan to bring it up. All she wants, she said, is more attention paid to the way in which tenants are evicted. "I don't want this to happen to anybody else," said Tagalu, who is allowed to move back into Kuhio Homes but is still sleeping in her friend's Moanalua home. Though she won her eviction appeal, Tagalu wants to leave the bad memories of her homelessness behind. She and her children will leave for Seattle — as planned — this month.

Reach Mary Vorsino at mvorsino@honoluluadvertiser.com.