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.


  • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Its scarcity because a tiny percentage of the population is holding a bunch of houses as an investment chip, not for shelter.

    Societies everywhere have to decide: do you want people housed, do you want a few rich assholes? Hint: one leads to a more stable society than the other

    wealth inequality is only growing so violence will increase at this rate

    • SCB@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Scroll down. I responded to these claims already. Society as a whole may dislike the kneecapping of the housing market, but it’s all locally controlled and people find all sorts of reasons to justify it to themselves (edit: this person literally justifies it to themselves in the next comment). Housing speculation is an obvious end result of this kneecapping of the market.

      Homes can either be “nest eggs” or we can have enough housing. Can’t be both.

      Wealth inequality doesn’t matter in any objective sense. It’s all feelings. If one person was a quadrillionaire and everyone else had plenty of money to make ends meet and enjoy leisure time, no one would give a shit about the quadrillionaire.

      • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Flat wrong, homes can still appreciate over time, you don’t need 20% every 2 -3 years to be a ‘nest egg’.

        Housing regulations have failed to control foreign investors and airBNBs, its not locally controlled at all.

        And nothing you said addressed the coming violence from a massive unhoused population with nothing to lose.

        • SCB@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Ideally, homes will slightly depreciate over time, unless rehabbed.

          Otherwise, housing prices, by definition, are going up.

          And nothing you said addressed the coming violence from a massive unhoused population with nothing to lose

          This is not a credible threat.

          • Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            Ideally, homes will slightly depreciate over time, unless rehabbed.

            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.

            • SCB@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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.

            • SCB@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              This paper begins by showing that the tendency for rates of violent crime and homicide to be higher where there is more inequality is part of a more general tendency for the quality of social relations to be poorer in more hierarchical societies.

              This paper is talking about lower-income people perpetuating crimes against one another which is not a “feature” unless you are a psychopath.

                • SCB@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  This both agrees with me that it’s all feelings-based, and is a totally different study.

                  Consistent with relative deprivation theory, we argue that this effect is a direct consequence of frustration over the distribution of income within a society, resulting in terrorism to voice dissent and achieve a redistribution of wealth

                  Also terrorism is not a feature unless you’re a psychopath. Terrorism, by definition, involves the harm of innocents.

                  • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.works
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                    1 year ago

                    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.

          • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Ideally, homes will slightly depreciate over time, unless rehabbed.

            Otherwise, housing prices, by definition, are going up.

            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