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.
Ideally, homes will slightly depreciate over time, unless rehabbed.
Otherwise, housing prices, by definition, are going up.
This is not a credible threat.
Its not a threat, its a feature of the system https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15817728/#:~:text=The most well-established environmental,tend to be more violent.
This paper is talking about lower-income people perpetuating crimes against one another which is not a “feature” unless you are a psychopath.
Thats not all it says. Income inequality and all violence are linked, including terrorism https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2766910
This both agrees with me that it’s all feelings-based, and is a totally different study.
Also terrorism is not a feature unless you’re a psychopath. Terrorism, by definition, involves the harm of innocents.
it agrees with me that there will be more violence, including terrorism. No idea what you’re talking about with this ‘feelings based’ argument. Rich people’s desire for more money is also feelings-based, it doesn’t change the fact that it has cause and effect associated.
You’d understand what I meant if you read my first comment. Inequality is not a measure of any person’s individual economic security. It’s just a measure of difference between high and low. That difference is objectively irrelevant - what objectively matters is an individual’s security and opportunity at the bottom of the difference.
Income inequality has subjective impacts, in that those at the bottom are more angry (justifiably or not) if other people are far more wealthy.
Human beings are not rational actors.
I’ve made this argument before and they followed up with land value increase as a retort. And I folded because it sounded true. Wouldn’t land value always go up in a growing city? Maybe you would understand this better than me.
Land value may go up and offset some of your depreciation, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. I don’t want to punish homeowners specifically, just have housing reflect the reality of it’s value over time if supply was sufficient.
Land value will rise less if we maximize use of land - this is why many people support things like LVTs that incentivize maximizing the value of your land.
With an acute shortage of housing, land skyrockets. If we build tall, land rises but much more slowly.
In order for this to be ok you’d also have to provide 0% interest loans, which is very fucking far from the case.
IMO part of the reason we’re constantly chasing the whole value growth dragon is that in order for the structure to make any sense at all to people homes have to appreciate in value. Otherwise over the course of the 30 years you’ll wind up paying double or near triple (depending upon interest rates) what the house is worth in order to hold it.
Edit: to a lesser extent, inflation is also a factor