The state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs is seeing a spike in calls to its Landlord Tenant Information Center. The department is working to determine if the uptick is due to the recent storms that damaged hundreds of homes. The center's main advice: document everything in writing.
“The landlord has the responsibility for a livable, habitable dwelling,” said DCCA Office of Consumer Protection Investigator Michael Williams.
" I always encourage, if it's through texting, save the texts, emails. Any verbal conversation or verbal agreement, ask the landlord, can you text me what we just talked about? Or summarize it yourself and ... text it to them and have them say, 'Yeah, OK, this is what we agreed to.'"
He explained that tenants cannot be forced to pay for repairs due to storm damage. However, no law bars landlords from asking renters to pay for repairs.
“If the tenant does call and says, ‘The landlord, we're talking about it, and the landlord asks me to repair it,’ it's up to them to make that decision if they want to work it out with the landlord,” Williams said.
“But on the landlord-tenant line, we're constantly saying, communicate, get it in writing … It is always tricky to kind of figure out exactly what the situation is between a landlord and a tenant so that we have to fall back on what's in the code. And it's clear there's no obligation that the tenant has to fix the place,” Williams said.
He added that renters cannot be charged for portions of the homes that are unusable, and that if the entire home is uninhabitable, landlords cannot continue to charge rent.
But it is up to tenants to find their own housing if they are displaced.
Depending on the degree of repair needed, landlords have between three and 12 days to start repairs on the property. However, there is no time limit for the work to be completed.
Office of Consumer Protection Supervising Investigator Sasi Faildo explained that while the work continues, landlords cannot terminate their lease.
“When people call, you have to really emphasize that,” she said. “If it goes on and on and on, does that give the landlord the right to terminate? It doesn't.”
If a renter is not able to live on the property while the work is being completed, the landlord will also be required to add the time back to their lease. For example, if the tenant needs to leave the property for 10 days so the home can be repaired, 10 days would be added to the end of the lease.
However, Office of Consumer Protection Executive Director Mana Moriarty pointed to the end of the lease date as a key inflection point. Once that date passes, the landlord is under no obligation to renew the agreement and the lease would expire.
He explained that the department is working on getting more information about the calls coming into the hotline and tracking whether it is due to the recent Kona low storms.
“ We're actually working with our vendor right now to try to track the new call volume that's specifically related to the Kona low flooding,” he said. “We had some really good tracking in place for the Maui wildfires, but we are still working with the vendor to get the tracking for the call data on the Kona lows.”
Following the 2023 Maui wildfires, the department received significant amounts of calls from people who were impacted, but many of the questions at the time centered around Gov. Josh Green’s eviction moratorium. There is currently no eviction moratorium in place following the storms.
Landlords and tenants can call the DCCA’s information center with their questions at 1-884-808-3222.
