Landlords Throw Party to Celebrate Being Able to Evict People Again
The Berkeley Property Owners Association's fall mixer is called "Celebrating the End of the Eviction Moratorium."
A group of Berkeley, California landlords will hold a fun social mixer over cocktails to celebrate their newfound ability to kick people out of their homes for nonpayment of rent, as first reported by Berkeleyside.
The Berkeley Property Owner Association lists a fall mixer on its website on Tuesday, September 12, 530 PM PST. “We will celebrate the end of the Eviction Moratorium and talk about what's upcoming through the end of the year,” the invitation reads. The event advertises one free drink and “a lovely selection of appetizers,” and encourages attendees to “join us around the fire pits, under the heat lamps and stars, enjoying good food, drink, and friends.”
The venue will ironically be held at a space called “Freehouse”, according to its website. Attendees who want to join in can RSVP on their website for $20.
Berkeley’s eviction moratorium lasted from March 2020 to August 31, 2023, according to the city’s Rent Board, during which time tenants could not be legally removed from their homes for nonpayment of rent. Landlords could still evict tenants if they had “Good Cause” under city and state law, which includes health and safety violations. Landlords can still not collect back rent from March 2020 to April 2023 through an eviction lawsuit, according to the Rent Board.
Berkeleyside spoke to one landlord planning to attend the eviction moratorium party who was frustrated that they could not evict a tenant—except that they could evict the tenant, who was allegedly a danger to his roommates—but the landlord found the process of proving a health and safety violation too tedious and chose not to pursue it.
The Berkeley Property Owner Association is a landlord group that shares leadership with a lobbying group called the Berkeley Rental Housing Coalition which advocated against a law banning source of income discrimination against Section 8 tenants and other tenant protections.
The group insists on not being referred to as landlords, however, which they consider “slander.” According to the website, “We politely decline the label "landlord" with its pejorative connotations.” They also bravely denounce feudalism, an economic system which mostly ended 500 years ago, and say that the current system is quite fair to renters.
“Feudalism was an unfair system in which landlords owned and benefited, and tenant farmers worked and suffered. Our society is entirely different today, and the continued use of the legal term ‘landlord’ is slander against our members and all rental owners.” Instead, they prefer to be called “housing providers.”
While most cities’ eviction moratoria elapsed in 2021 and 2022, a handful of cities in California still barred evictions for non-payment into this year. Alameda County’s eviction moratorium expired in May, Oakland’s expired in July. San Francisco’s moratorium also elapsed at the end of August, but only covered tenants who lost income due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In May, Berkeley’s City Council added $200,000 to the city’s Eviction Defense Funds, money which is paid directly to landlords to pay tenants’ rent arrears, but the city expected those funds to be tapped out by the end of June.
Sounds like Renter entitlement to me... You admit that they want to do renovations to the property. Why should they cater to you if they can improve the property and get better rent for it? They want to add improvements. Those improvements have a cost associated with it... you're not willing to pay. That's that. You think that those improvements should be furnished to you for free?
But see, this is my point. You've left out the details that paint you poorly. Ultimately the owner has a right to do with their property as they please unless they violate the law or contract.
Honestly don't care, dude. You apparently are also some kind of entitled person talking out of your ass about something that happened to me.
Improvements weren't needed. At all. It's just the ongoing repeated cycle we have over here of owner's making unnecessary renovations just to resell it or re-rent it at much higher prices, usually at whatever they heard someone else was renting things for, which is why so many people who live here have trouble finding homes and possibly leave the state even though they shouldn't have to. Natives getting prices out of their own homeland by investors from the mainland.
You want to talk about entitlement? How about all these out-of-state companies calling Lahaina fire survivors to try to sweep up and take over their land? They're trying to do this exact this same thing, just the next version of the cycle.
See, to me you're the arrogant, entitled, ignorant one, because there's a whole different kind of housing politics going on here than anywhere else on the mainland. Similar, but way worse, partially because we're a tourist destination. You just won't actually understand until you've been here living with it, and remain ignorant with wrong opinions until you do.
I'm blocking you now. Enjoy your day.
A lot of those people don't have money to rebuild a house... Getting value for their land so they can live somewhere else is likely the only way out of poverty for a lot of those people. But you can feel free to dress it up however you want.
And considering you have no idea where I live... pot... kettle.
Yes because that's what adults do when they don't get their way in a conversation. They plug their ears screaming "LALALALA" rather than continuing rational conversations.