What is mediation?

Mediation is a confidential, non-adversarial and voluntary process through which one of our trained volunteer mediators hears a dispute between two or more individuals and attempts to help them settle their dispute. 

The mediator remains neutral and does not decide who is right or wrong but helps the parties in talking about issues that are important to them. 

The actual decisions reached are up to the parties in dispute.

Community mediation=a better community

Community mediation resolves interpersonal disputes between friends, neighbors and family members. Typical issues mediated involve property damage, consumer complaints, landlord-tenant disputes and animal nuisance. To ensure access to all community members, community mediation services are provided by the center without charge. 

Success Stories

Christmas Cheer
Two weeks before Christmas 2005, a Medicaid nurse/case-manager called the Community Mediation Center to get assistance for a pregnant client suffering with a severe heart condition.  The 27-year-old, single mother of a 5-year-old son was six months pregnant with her second child and facing a possible eviction from her downtown Columbia apartment. 

A Center representative was able to speak with her landlord and avoid the eviction with a future payment plan for her rent. As a result, the client was able to make preparations to move in with family within upcoming months.

Newlyweds
At the beginning of summer, a Houston couple—married for about two weeks—called the Center in a panic. They were planning to move to Irmo within the next month, but were called on their honeymoon with derailed plans. The couple was told they could not move into the 2-bedroom luxury apartment they had reserved because the residents occupying it wouldn’t move out. They had given the apartment complex a security deposit and had been given their move-in date and future apartment address during a house hunting trip to the Midlands, which cost the newlyweds about $1,500—but had not signed a lease. The husband insisted that moving to another complex was not an option, because they loved this apartment and had already begun giving out their new address.

A Center representative contacted the apartment manager, who wanted the couple to change their move-in date—not an option with new jobs start-dates—or to move into a 1-bedroom apartment home which was too small for their belongings until another unit became available.

Finally after a week, we were able to conciliate the issue. The program coordinator explained all of the expenses incurred by the couple and the additional expenses it would take them to move again after a larger apartment became available. As a result, the manager agreed to allow the couple to move into a 3-bedroom and discounted half the rent for one month.

Summer Heat
During this summer’s heat wave, a northeast Columbia resident ’s rental home air conditioning was not cooling efficiently. A staff member from United Way’s 211 crisis-line referred the resident to the Community Mediation Center. The tenant was very upset with her subsidized rental home property manager because of restrictions they were trying to place on her for air conditioning use. The property manager wanted the resident to limit her daytime cooking hours and traffic flow in out of her home.

We were able to schedule mediation with the resident, property manager and a representative from the Columbia Housing Authority.  The mediation was canceled and the issue was conciliated after the tenant purchased her own window unit.  The property manger agreed to allow her to have it as long as she was responsible for its use and set-up.