The Berkeley Property Owners Association's fall mixer is called "Celebrating the End of the Eviction Moratorium."

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.

  • PizzaMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4230·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • krayj@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      248·
      1 year ago

      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?

      • Chocrates@lemmy.worldEnglish
        216·
        1 year ago

        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

        • krayj@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          135·
          1 year ago

          The only system I’ve ever experienced like this was the 4 years I spent on active duty in the USMC. All the basics (food, housing, medical) were provided for as part of the deal. But (and this is a big BUT) that was in exchange for the individual voluntarily giving up the vast majority of their rights and free will by agreeing to live in what can only be described as a dictatorship - and also in exchange for tireless work and unquestioning obedience. I somehow do not believe that the majority of people advocating for government-provided everything would be willing to hold up their end of that kind of expected social contract in exchange. Everything has a ‘cost’, and by saying that ‘the government’ should bear that cost, what you are really saying is that the taxpayers should bear that cost.

          I guess what I’m saying is: I keep hearing and seeing this sentiment that housing should be an inalienable human right, and I don’t have any reason to disagree with that, I’m just asking for someone to explain how that would be feasible or point to an example of a working model of that.

          • Shyfer@ttrpg.networkEnglish
            102·
            1 year ago

            It’s been done in other countries to great effect. The UK had a great public housing system and no one would say that was some horrible dictatorship. The only cost was the normal amount of taxes they pay. It’s slowly been a bit privatized form what I understand, but provided housing for a majority of the population without complaint for hundreds of years,and still provides for a large part of the population. They even built ones that look pretty nice and not like the public housing people imagine in like Soviet Russia.

              • Shyfer@ttrpg.networkEnglish
                5·
                1 year ago

                That happens in private apartments, too. My old landlord left a huge hole in the wall for almost a year. Others regularly ignore mold. My current one ignored water damage. It’s what landlords do.

                That plight in the article, like many others, seems to be caused mostly from the steady but gradual defunding of the UK’s public services for to long time conservative and Tory control of the government.

                 “The funding from the government to build new social homes is insufficient and so they have to rely on other income streams,” Rob says.

          • Chocrates@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            So you were able to take advantage of this and “all” you had to do was give up your life for a number of years, potentially forever, and possibly kill people.

            I am in no way trying to attack you or your service, but should that be a requirement for everyone? Should we need people to have to do that to live?

            • krayj@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I think the entire message of my comment escaped you. Especially the beginning part, the middle part, and the end part. If you re-read what I wrote, the gist is that I’ve only ever seen one system in the US that does what people are wanting but I don’t think that’s what they had in mind…and then I follow up with a request for someone to point to a working model for how they are expecting it to work.

              Your comment…is just an attack on my personal experience that I cited as a reference. It’s offensive. Your comment comes across as unnecessarily hostile. I am not sure if it’s because you didn’t understand what I was getting at, or if you just wanted to be intentionally argumentative.

        • r_thndr@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          59·
          1 year ago

          Access to shelter is a human right, but access to a rental property requires an agreement between the tenant and the property owner.

          Where does the boogeyman capitalism figure into upholding your end of the bargain? If you’re unable to work, there’s an (admittedly minimal for a Western nation) safety net in place and countless charities willing to assist. You still have to contribute to society. Working isn’t the only way.

          • PizzaMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
            114·
            1 year ago

            Where does the boogeyman capitalism figure into upholding your end of the bargain?

            The part where the threat of homelessness is coercive.

            If you’re unable to work, there’s an (admittedly minimal for a Western nation) safety net in place and countless charities willing to assist.

            For food there is a shitty safety net here. For rent, it is abysmal. It’s incredibly difficult to get help with rent, so saying there is countless charities willing to assist is grossly misleading. Social workers always recommend paying rent instead of food for this very reason.

            You still have to contribute to society. Working isn’t the only way.

            Being unable to work isn’t the only problem. There are next to no places in the U.S. where the minimum wage will cover the rent of a 1bd apartment. Landlords shouldn’t exist in the first place, they are just leeches.

            • chriscrutch@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              the threat of homelessness is coercive.

              Well foxes and rabbits and blue jays don’t have capitalism or government, but if they don’t put in some work to eat and get shelter, then they won’t survive either. That isn’t a “threat,” that’s a physical truth of the universe that has existed for millennia. Nothing is achieved without work and input.

              • PizzaMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                if they don’t put in some work to eat and get shelter, then they won’t survive either

                That’s not a good world. We shouldn’t seek to emulate it. We are higher beings than other animals, and we should act as such. We have more than enough for everybody to have shelter and safety, yet we instead choose a system that prevents all from having it.

                Nothing is achieved without work and input.

                I never said otherwise.

      • PizzaMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        93·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
        75·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • arwengrey@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      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

      • PizzaMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • chakan2@lemmy.worldEnglish
      97·
      1 year ago

      Honest question…if land lords don’t exist, and you can’t afford a house, where do you propose we get housing from?

      • PizzaMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        109·
        1 year ago

        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.