Nobody should live like those at 119 Oxford St.

The city of Lewiston rightfully condemned the dilapidated apartment block on Wednesday, after a pre-eviction hearing inspection. Its four tenants – who haven’t paid rent since August – live in what can only be described as dangerous squalor, in a heatless tenement ill-prepared for the harsh winter ahead.

Doors are busted and rotting. Leaky faucets run into rusted basins. Basic appliances look like they’ve been scavenged from a junkman’s graveyard. And the only venue for the tenant and landlord grievances is Maine’s overburdened court system, which will hold an eviction hearing on Dec. 6.

Landlord-tenant disputes are sticky. Assigning responsibility for the conditions on Oxford Street is sure to become a battle of pointing fingers.

The attorney for the landlord, R.L.E Limited Partnership, is already laying blame on the tenants, whose solidarity he describes as a “mob mentality.” The tenants demand repairs, but have also displayed a sincere lack of respect for the property, and have caused plenty of preventable and unncessary damage.

This fight is not going to end pretty. They rarely do.

What these types of cases need are referees, not judges. As in any divisive personal dispute, mediation is a far more effective and efficient course of action than litigation. Courts should be the last resort for landlord-tenant disputes, instead of the lone arena in which to seek resolution.

Many other states have landlord-tenant mediation laws. Some Georgia mediation, for example, is conducted by law students earning course credit. Mediators have intervened in Florida mobile-home disputes since 1984. The state of Washington offers informal landlord-tenant mediation through its state Attorney General’s Office.

Maine mandates “alternative dispute resolution” for four types of complaints: small claims, domestic relations (such as divorce, and child custody), land use and environmental, and commercial. And a 25-year-old Maine study of small claims cases makes a compelling argument for mediation: the study found two-thirds of cases in mediation reached resolution, especially disputes over unpaid debt.

Putting landlord-tenant disputes into the hands of mediators, prior to the courts, could relieve Maine’s plodding judicial system of another responsibility, and provide a perhaps faster, and less expensive, method of resolving the dispute. If both sides fail to agree, then the courts can act as the final arbiter.

Nobody should live like tenants of 119 Oxford St., regardless of who is liable for the squalid conditions. But it’s unfair for tenants and landlords alike to be waiting and expecting Maine’s courts to fix them.