A six-unit apartment building in Honolulu’s McCully neighborhood is the focus of a recent tenant dispute.
Tenants at 1738 Young St. were evicted from their homes last month. But residents said they've had to deal with various maintenance issues for several years.
Basic repairs needed included holes in the walls chewed by rats, water sitting in tubs unable to drain, and broken jalousies that were boarded with wooden plaques.
Residents say their situation highlights a need to revise the state's landlord-tenant code, which they feel sways too heavily toward landlords.
All tenants in the building are Micronesian from the Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of Palau and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Micronesia is an area located 3,700 miles southwest of Hawaiʻi. They share a treaty with the U.S. called the Compacts of Free Association.
Nancy Agrippah, who is Pohnpeian, has lived in her apartment for about seven months. Her tub was halfway filled with water.
“I cannot shower in my bathtub because it’s broken, so I shower outside,” Agrippah said.
The holes in her ceiling were covered in tape. Agrippah said she had to board her broken windows so no one would break into her home.
Tenants said they stopped paying their monthly rent for some months because the landlord didn’t make any basic repairs.
“Everything is not good. It’s bad,” Agrippah said. “Windows broke, doors broke. The rain comes down every day. We have to put something down so the water doesn’t go inside.”
The breaking point for residents was the water shut-off for 11 days. On June 1, the tenants wrote a letter to their landlord asking for repairs. The landlord that same day gave them an eviction notice.
Sergio Alcubilla, an executive director of the Hawaiʻi Workers Center, said housing advocates and tenants want to form a working group to address housing concerns and suggestions to revamp the tenant-landlord code.
“We want this working group to happen because we know this situation is not isolated here,” Alcubilla said. “We know that there's other families that are suffering and some other communities as well.”
The two-story building was originally built in 1960 and last sold in 1996 for $630,000, according to the city’s real property assessment division.
The landlord, Hyun Ah Park, declined an interview with HPR.
Since 2019, Alberina Kirielmo has lived in her unit with her husband Robert, who is the president of the COFA Workers Association, an advocacy group for Micronesians formed in 2021.
Kirielmo said she has no refrigerator, and rats have chewed holes in the pantries. In her bathroom, she has a bucket to catch water leaking from the tub’s faucet. She also had to place a towel by the toilet because it leaks from the bottom every time she flushes.
According to the landlord-tenant handbook, tenants may deduct up to $500 from next month’s rent if the landlord fails to perform repairs.
“One time the maintenance came to be fixed,” Kirielmo said. “But they did not come back and the problem is still the same.”
