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.


173 points

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.

I feel like people should really read this part and fully absorb what it means.

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48 points

It’s not that surprising, courts require specific hard evidence. Getting the roommates present to testify may or may not be enough, but it’s far more difficult than showing unpaid rent or a hoarding situation.

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46 points

Oh, boo hoo. A landlord actually having to do work. How awful, this is truly a tragedy of unspoken proportions

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15 points

Been a landlord for almost 20 years. I’ve rebuilt some of these houses myself from an auctioned off unlivable disaster to a safe, clean, maintained property. To imply landlords don’t work is such a narrow sighted view of reality. I got a glimpse during covid of an eviction moratorium a tenant that had quite a bit of hardship and I worked with her for 5 years pre-covid. Heating oil run out she couldn’t afford I filled it out of pocket for her and her family. If she needed flexibility on rent timing I worked with her. When she snuck an untrained dog classified as an emotion support dog that chewed up the house’s 70 year old woodwork stairs and balusters. I worked with her. When covid hit and the moratorium was about to go live her lease was up1 month prior. She ceased paying rent and utilities, I was informed I’d have to cover all her expenses during the moratorium. If she hadn’t had that lease end right before this moratorium she would’ve continued staying there for free while I covered her family’s entire housing and utilities. In the end my thanks for covering her and enforcing the lease end date was an entire house abandoned and full of trash and pest. Took my wife and I almost 2 months and close to $5000 to clean, repaint, repair/replace that property on top of the maintenance costs. This isn’t a black and white situation…
Tldr, I guess: Evictions are a last resort for people who have had an agreement no longer be met by the other party. Should never have mad a moratorium on that legal process imo, it needed to have flexibility to help both parties not just shoulder 1 party with all the responsibility. The party is in extremely poor taste but I can understand their relief if they have similar tenants they can hopefully divest of after years of what my example held. I wouldn’t have been able to do it for 3 years financially or mentally.

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-31 points

You seem to have this idea that landlords don’t work? I am a landlord and I have to work full time to help cover the cost of the mortgage. If I don’t, the tenant will get kicked out by the bank when they take back the house.

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23 points

They like to use one case like this as their excuse to kick out a dozen people who are just trying to survive

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12 points

Yeah that bit caught my eye and tracks perfectly with every landlord I have ever known.

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126 points

“We prefer to be called ‘housing providers’”

I’ll call you extortionists. Take it or leave it.

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100 points

“We prefer to be called ‘housing providers’”

Landlords provide housing like scalpers provide concert tickets.

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5 points

Concerts fundamentally have a limit or capacity. There is no such thing for housing. All current restraints are arbitrarily chosen and we can change them if we want to.

At the root, housing in the US and especially California is a tragedy of the commons where it is in no current owners interests to allow more construction. So all of them have created a homeowners lobby to make new construction illegal.

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12 points

So you’re saying housing has a fundamental limit?

I mean you could say the same about concerts. They have a fundamental limit because the venue refuses to build a bigger space.

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-42 points

You seem to think that houses just spring magically from the ground without any huge financial cost to build them.

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38 points
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Hi, landlord here and I want to clear up any misconceptions. I don’t build any houses, I only buy them up and then rent them out at a profit.

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22 points

extortionists

This only exists because almost every American city makes it illegal, or very difficult to build new housing. It’s very hard to extort people when the a proper supply.

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18 points

Sounds like people are in bed with the government to stop competition

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-8 points

Yep, and voters can change that if they want to.

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6 points

Because of existing landowners.

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0 points

The vast majority of landowners are not landlords.

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13 points

Landleeches also works.

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3 points

Plz seed, not enough houses

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9 points

How about home scalpers?

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8 points

It’s price gouging for dwellings.

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5 points

Landsharks

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69 points

Completely unrelated question but where can I buy termites, and where can I buy a slingshot, and how many Gees can you subject a termite to without killing it?

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30 points

Assuming you mean “Gs” but I’m fascinated by what you have in mind for the last bit

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47 points

No, they meant “Gees”

It’s a good question, since termite gees may be different from bee gees.

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23 points

Yeah but they wanted to know how many before the termites weren’t stayin’ alive anymore

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1 point

But did they mean “A Gees”, or “Bee Gees”?

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17 points

A gee is Irish slang for vagina

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17 points

We don’t need context, we need answers!

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13 points

So, how many?

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52 points

The party is overall shitty I agree with that. I also don’t think people should be able to own more than one home just to get rental income and have someone else pay their mortgage. This depletes the housing supply and takes away wealth building opportunities for families trying to build their own wealth.

That being said, this could have been handled better. If tenants could pause rent then the banks should have paused payments on mortgages that qualify as well, or just all mortgages.

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28 points

My view is that unless you have a heartbeat you can’t buy residential property. I’m not entirely against landlords because people want to rent, imagine having to buy everytime you went to a new city or place. But it should be diminishing returns from progressive tax policies that disincentivise multiple properties.

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7 points

Renting out a home can make sense for other reasons too. I have a friend who moved to the UK for work and is renting out their house in the US for a few years as security in case the game company he got a job with goes under.

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4 points

There are also people unable to deal with certain aspects of life and rentals give them freedom to live on their own but someone else maintains the property. It is a nice aspect of renting. Roof fails? Not my problem. Sewar issue? Someone else deals with it.

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3 points

Good point. Do you think there should be any restrictions on who can own and rent these homes? Say only people from the community or state? It seems like there are a lot of foreign investors that buy a ton of homes. Then that rental money just leaves the community.

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2 points

Foreign investors wouldn’t see much returns in buying if this was the case. They’d have drastically less profits and with each property they’d have a higher percentage tax to pay. So by the time they’d get to being a big investment firm that bought up properties on a large scale they’d be paying 80+% of their income in taxes which isn’t viable, by design, and the money would be invested elsewhere.

But strictly speaking absolutely no foreign investment funds should be buying up housing stock.

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9 points

I don’t even want a home to build wealth I just want a fucking place to live in that I can build on and work on my hobbies. I couldn’t give less of a shit if the value never goes up.

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4 points

Housing prices don’t need to change to build wealth. You are just keeping your money in your house instead of giving it away to a landlord. Then if you need to move you have all you’ve accumulated instead of nothing.

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1 point

Housing value on your primary residence going up is actually a bad thing for most owner-occupied properties in most localities. Higher value = higher taxes.

Not in California as much though thanks to prop 13 (which should only apply to owner-occupied properties but doesn’t… So there’s good and bad).

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2 points
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If tenants could pause rent then the banks should have paused payments on mortgages that qualify as well, or just all mortgages.

While it definitely could’ve been handled better, in the US at least you could pause your mortgage payments for a time. That doesn’t stop the property taxes though.

When I signed my mortgage I had to promise not to use those programs, I don’t know how legally binding that actually was though.

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3 points
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True but they should have been the same duration in my opinion. The property tax would have been ideal to pause too but wouldn’t that cause more problems for the local community instead of just the big banks?

AFAIK (NAL) any law supersedes a contract. So that doesn’t seem enforceable to me. They may be able to break the contract in that situation, saying you violated it. Then it would need to be handled in court with the bank likely having better lawyers.

Say it is written into the lease that the landlord only has to give one weeks notice for a tenant to move out. Both parties can sign it but the law says 30 days. The police would be called at the end of the week and say the tenant still has 2 weeks.

Yet you can give away certain rights like the right to sue so that may be a bad example.

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2 points

Yeah I mean I agree that they should’ve been available for the same time, but I’m betting most landlords weren’t really in dire straits enough to use them in the first place.

I think that’s why they’re easily forgettable as available programs: most people that own never needed to use them.

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48 points

They prefer to be called “Housing Providers”

Parasites prefer to be called “Sharing friends”

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18 points

and I prefer to call them Guillotine entertainment providers

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-2 points
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If that’s a reference to the French revolution… then you may want to read up about the French revolution.

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8 points

it’s not, it’s a reference to fuck the rich.

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