Honolulu residents pay some of the highest rents in the nation. But there still isn’t an organization dedicated to advocating for tenants. And when it comes to actual eviction cases, they lose nearly every time.

Tenants are only represented 5 percent of the time in eviction cases compared to 70 percent for landlords, according to a recent study by Lawyers for Equal Justice, a program of the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for low-income people.

Ninety-five percent of cases end in eviction, and half end in a default judgment for the landlord.

Victor Geminiani, co-executive director of Hawaiʻi Appleseed, says blaming a lack of money “is a deflection of responsibility to do something about the problem.”

“If a client walked in their door and said, ‘I’ll pay your $250 an hour, I need to find a way to stay in this house, an answer would be found,'” Geminiani said. When it comes to low-income renters, “just because they don’t have the money doesn’t mean they don’t have defenses or counterclaims to that eviction.”

The Appleseed study offered a range of potential solutions such as allowing law students and paralegals to defend renters; giving renters more time to come up with rent; improving how tenants are notified about hearings; and allowing tenants to withhold rent if their unit is in bad condition. Some states, like Connecticut, already give renters more time to catch up on rent.

Geminiani says Hawaiʻi Appleseed and a coalition of like-minded organizations plan to advocate at the legislature this year for many of the report’s recommendations. But he knows it may take years to actually succeed in legislative changes and he’s not sure whether Hawaiʻi Appleseed has the bandwidth to take the lead on this issue over the long term.