Avoiding Court Crowding through Mediation - Experiment in Washington State Comes to End

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and several people suddenly died in a nursing home in Western Washington, the state government realized that life as we knew it was going to be interrupted. Society was presented with a big risk if people were not able to shelter in place, despite the risk of losing jobs too.  A state-wide eviction moratorium was implemented, recognizing that, once it was lifted, the courts might be overwhelmed with eviction cases.

The state therefore adopted legislation requiring that county-run dispute resolution centers develop mediation programs throughout Washington to respond to that anticipated flood of cases and mandated that any landlord initiating eviction proceedings had to (a) first notify their local dispute resolution center and (b) notify the tenant of an option to mediate a potential payment plan for repaying back due rent.  If the tenant wanted to mediate, then the landlord was obliged to attend and mediate in good faith before the landlord could pursue eviction.  The program also required the landlord to offer a reasonable repayment plan to the tenant, with monthly payments that in any event could not exceed one-third of the monthly rent the tenant had been paying.  For the past two years, this program has been in place and many tenants and landlords successfully reached agreement regarding payment plans. Others worked out mutually acceptable move-out plans when a payment plan wasn’t possible, which also avoided evictions and stains on tenants’ credit ratings, along with reducing the wait time for landlords to recover possession of their units or homes and prepare them for reletting.  Some landlords loved the program; some did not.  Some tenants didn’t understand the potential benefits of such a program and didn’t elect to participate.  Not all mediations resulted in settlement.

Effective July 1, 2023, the program sunsetted throughout Washington State.  Statistics are still being gathered on how many people avoided losing their leases or becoming unhoused because of this program. Moreover, there is no doubt that, because it was a pilot program, participants of all kinds – mediators, lawyers, landlords, tenants and administrators – had ideas on how the program could be better operated if it were to continue or be replicated. 

As a mediator who gave many hundreds of hours of my time to the program, however, I can confidently say that it changed some people’s lives.  I know because participants told me it did.  Some marveled at how mediation could turn conflict into a constructive conversation about a solution and started thinking of ways they could use mediation in other parts of their lives.  Some couldn’t believe that there was a process where they could tell their stories.  Some loved avoiding the stress and strain of legal proceedings.  Some didn’t care much about the process at all but were just grateful that the intense stress they were carrying about evicting a family in need or being evicted, ended with the mediation – that the parties had reached agreement on a solution that all were confident was capable of being performed and allowed them to put this unpleasant circumstance behind them.  For landlords with high default rates, the resolution of disputes in less time than the courts were going to take was sometimes a big relief.  For administrators and court judges who would have had to deal with the flood of cases absent this pilot program, they were grateful that such a flood was avoided or at least mitigated by the program. For me, the most life changing aspect of participation was to observe the compassion both tenants and landlords showed for one another.  It was my honor to have been given the chance to help our community with a more compassionate response to an extremely difficult situation for all concerned.  Although it wasn’t perfect, it certainly was better than the alternative of doing nothing to try to keep people secure and healthy throughout the pandemic.

Mediation cannot change the world, but it, along with other forms of alternative dispute resolution, can change conflict into resolution one dispute at a time.  I look forward to future opportunities to help our community create more just and compassionate solutions in other areas of conflict through mediation.