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.
I would be partying too, you gotta pay your rent. That’s insane they couldn’t evict for that.
It’s crazy it’s been this long. Most places had a year or so of no evictions. It’s also a not insignificant reason rent is going up, previously it was unthinkable that the government would just prevent any recourse for people not paying rent. Now it’s happened in recent memory.
The city should have to pay the rent since they’re making it unrecoverable.
You know the city only has tax money right? If the city were to cover the unpaid rent every tax paying person would really be paying the rent.
“you see honor, this 600 sqft apartment has a value of $4500 a month but the tenant can’t afford that… Just make the tax payers pay me!”
What? You couldn’t kick out tenants if they weren’t paying rent before?? That’s insane.
Obviously there should be grace periods etc and the whole system is fucked with house prices, but if you’re providing a service and people don’t pay for the service, you should be able to stop providing the service.
The responses absolutely blow my mind here. I’ve been fucked over by landlords before but it’s completely illogical to expect someone to just let you live in their apts rent free.
No one is saying people should be able to simply not pay bills. They want the bills to not exist. People deserve mortgages of their own.
Not everyone wants to own. There are legitimate reasons for landlords to exist. They shouldn’t be as prevalent as they are, but buying isn’t always the best option for everyone.
Yes but there is no way an 18 year old who just left school and is working minimum wage can afford a mortgage, completely ignoring the fact that they haven’t had time to even save a deposit. Being able to rent and pay less than mortgage prices gives people a chance to save up for their own house.
It got pretty bad for a while. Landlords were stuck with properties that had tenants that were getting absolutely destroyed and there was nothing they could legally do about it. It resulted in increased barriers they put up to ensure that folks would actually pay rent and not destroy properties. It’s become increasingly difficult to actually get an apartment in many cities with this rule in place.
Then what you want is less rental inventory. Because this is how you get less rental inventory.
I am sincerely sorry that you don’t care about people’s quality of life and ensuring everyone gets quality housing over your ideology.
The service is warmth, shelter and safety. I just want to point that out since you really want to make it sound like it’s the same as a Netflix subscription.
All true. But what’s also true is paying a mortgage with rental income. It’s why some folks found themselves out anyway as the house was sold. When a landlord is backed into a corner financially, this is their answer.
What is also an answer is rentals sitting vacant out of squatting fear. I found this often while travel nursing. Landlords who would rent to me for 3+ months, but only because I’m temporary and can show them I already have a home. When folks stop honoring the contract to pay for the shit they’re borrowing, less inventory is going to be a very real outcome.
Consider. Your monthly income is 4 rentals at $1500 each, minus expenses. Property tax. Income tax. Maintenance. Possibly a water/sewage bill. One stops paying. Then 2. Enter legal expenses. Your current mortgage where you’re living is still due. Managing it and providing your own childcare is your full time job.
There’s this whole ethos that there are no people involved on the landlord side and there can be no financial struggle from anyone with a landlord title.
That and there’s a very simple fact of it’s not your shit. You’re borrowing someone else’s things under contract.
I agree it’s not ideal, but systemic housing change comes from several steps above a landlord. She’s just someone with extra shit she can lend out for a fee. Punishing her in the meantime like she owes you something, after making property available for use so someone can have a home, not cool. She doesn’t owe you rent or a home.
Landlords existing increases the cost of housing for everyone, they’re parasites on society.
A house should only be held by a landlord or builder for as long as it takes to sell it, with heavy taxes for sitting on properties. That would provide housing.
Consider. Your monthly income is 4 rentals at $1500 each, minus expenses. Property tax. Income tax. Maintenance. Possibly a water/sewage bill. One stops paying. Then 2. Enter legal expenses. Your current mortgage where you’re living is still due. Managing it and providing your own childcare is your full time job.
There’s this whole ethos that there are no people involved on the landlord side and there can be no financial struggle from anyone with a landlord title.
You’re ignoring the main point. If people stop paying, it’s usually because they lost their job and are looking for a new one. So why don’t you suggest the landlord get a part time job to make up their income? Why should they be entitled to rent during a pandemic when their tenant lost their job?
Also, you are ignoring the fact that there were Covid funds available for landlords who lost rent due to non-payment. It was an inconvenience, but so was Covid. As a nurse did you throw a fit because you had to wear extra protective equipment? Or did you realize the reason behind it?
The eviction moratorium was ultimately a health policy. Maybe you didn’t realize that, but its purpose was to save lives.
Yes landlords can be awful scumbags…
But am I supposed to think that people should be able to live rent free despite agreeing to pay rent? Not seeing anyone pointing this “minor” issue out here.
Maybe people could actually pay rent if they were charging reasonable rates and didn’t intentionally keep housing scarce. Maybe we could instead stop letting NIMBYs get away with their bullshit.
Landlords do not deserve rent, they shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Reality is not your strong suit.
Jumping to insults when criticized shows how weak your position is.
there are certainly people who defraud them by not paying rent despite agreeing to it.
Landlords are scalpers. I have no empathy for them, nor should anybody else.
Honest question…if land lords don’t exist, and you can’t afford a house, where do you propose we get housing from?
I answered this a little lower down:
Landlords do not deserve rent, they shouldn’t exist in the first place.
I’ve seen this sentiment a lot, especially since joining lemmy a few months ago, and I am genuinely confused by it. Could you elaborate on this? I can’t comprehend what incentive someone would have to develop property (finance and pay for the actual physical process of constructing a physical place for people to live) if it was a foregone conclusion that they do not deserve to exist, let alone be compensated for it. And don’t take this the wrong way, I’m definitely not defending the act of celebrating being able to evict people, so don’t interpret my question as being apologist for landlords. I’m just struggling to understand what the alternative would be.
Is there an alternative process you are referring to? If so, what is it?
I’ve seen this sentiment a lot, especially since joining lemmy a few months ago, and I am genuinely confused by it. Could you elaborate on this?
Landlords provide no value to anything. I’ll let Adam Smith, the father of capitalism say it:
He sometimes demands rent for what is altogether incapable of human improvement. Kelp is a species of sea-weed, which, when burnt, yields an alkaline salt, useful for making glass, soap, and for several other purposes. It grows in several parts of Great Britain, particularly in Scotland, upon such rocks only as lie within the high water mark, which are twice every day covered with the sea, and of which the produce, therefore, was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it as much as for his corn fields.
The sea in the neighbourhood of the islands of Shetland is more than commonly abundant in fish, which make a great part of the subsistence of their inhabitants. But in order to profit by the produce of the water, they must have a habitation upon the neighbouring land. The rent of the landlord is in proportion, not to what the farmer can make by the land, but to what he can make both by the land and by the water. It is partly paid in sea-fish; and one of the very few instances in which rent makes a part of the price of that commodity, is to be found in that country.
The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give.
I think it comes down to, should living indoors be a human right or is it ok to let people sleep on the streets if they aren’t very good at capitalism?
After that it comes down to how to do it? Perhaps housing should be the governments job and the wealthy can fuck off to the middle of nowhere if they want to own something
Is there an alternative process you are referring to? If so, what is it?
Private industries that regularly fail ought to instead be nationalized, especially ones that deal with basic necessities. The government should be building housing on a massive scale, and selling it at low cost to families, individuals for personal use only, non profit co-ops, etc. Hundreds of thousands of new apartment units ought to be built by the government as prefab units that are manufactured in pieces in factories and then shipped off for assembly at location. Basically, lego-ify housing. Such a solution would benefit greatly from economies of scale, and would go such a long way towards fixing the problem. This would take quite a lot of rezoning, but nothing impossible.
Capitalism works on the assumption that there is competition, but that’s not really possible with housing. You can’t realistically just move to a different place overnight every day to get the best deal, there are limits for how many residences exist in an area, etc. Housing is physically tied to land use, which means there essentially is no competition. As a result landlords price gouge, price fix, and charge thousands of dollars for single bedroom units that are run down and in need of repair. Government doesn’t work on the notion of competition. If the law says that X housing units are to be built in city Y, then it’s going to happen, all without a profit motive.
what incentive someone would have to develop property (finance and pay for the actual physical process of constructing a physical place for people to live
The government exists to maintain the stability and well-being of our country, so it has a responsibility to develop property to fix the housing crisis, and to replace the utter failure that is landlords. The people who actually build housing, the construction laborers, city planners, etc, they all are doing actual work and deserve compensation. Landlords don’t do that, owning is not a job and should not have a wage.
A society with landlords has failed at one of the most basic tasks. Housing is a human right, it should be easily accessible to everyone.
So who deserves the rent? The government ? That’s even worse taxes are damn too high why do you think neighborhoods are being gentrified? Real Estate Investment Companies and banks are buying all of the properties and land. I used to be homeless thanks to these jabronis
So who deserves to rent?
I’m not sure I understand your question.
why do you think neighborhoods are being gentrified?
Neighborhoods become too expensive to live in, and so minorities get forced out.
Real Estate Investment Companies and banks are buying all of the properties and land
Amd that shouldn’t be legal.
Landlords provide no benefit to society, outlaw them
I have benefited from being able to rent a house because there’s no way I would have been able to afford to buy one at 18.
Explain to me how, at age 18 with no money and minimum wage, I would be able to build a house. If there are no landlords, then there is no housing excess houses so I would need to pay for a house to be built. How can I afford to pay the workers to build the house and pay for the construction materials? You seem to think houses just magically spring from the ground at no cost. Taking away landlords doesn’t remove the cost of construction, materials and connection to utilities.
I bet you’re going to say something like ‘but the government will provide it.’
Land lords aren’t the only option for short term housing. Housing can be provided by the state or the university without a profit motive for cheaper. You can look to systems like Singapore and Vienna where the public housing is robust enough to cover housing needs, without landlords leeching off the work of others.
I bet you’re going to say something like ‘but the government will provide it.’
See my comment below.
The government uses income taxes to build public housing, how is that not leeching off the work of others??
I totally agree. We should provide homes to people to live in instead of giving them to landlords to rent seek with
Yes, you should be always able to evict people from your property no matter the reason.
Yeah well the thing about contracts is that they rely on the government to enforce them, and the sovereign has always been free to abdicate such enforcement.
That’s why racial restrictive covenants were first found illegal, even though there is no state action in the covenant itself.
He got that psycho neckbeard look. At least now we know what kind of people hate landlords.
Tenant is dating a black person and you don’t like black people? Kick them out! It’s your property!
Literally yes. If that was the case, the landlord would be totally insane and be hurting his income. As long as the tenant pays and behaves properly I bet the landlord prefers money to personal views.
