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.


  • ∟⊔⊤∦∣≶
    link
    English
    19 months ago

    Very different to the situation here. I ran some numbers earlier:

    The average house price is now over 1 million. If you buy a house for 1 mil with a $200k deposit (unreachable for the vast majority including me) then your weekly payments are over $1200 excluding rates.

    To rent a property it is very easy to find a multitude that sit at the $600 per week mark and some even lower for the same number of bedrooms.

    • archomrade [he/him]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      These comparisons are absolutely meaningless.

      Show me a comp for a house for sale and a comparable house for rent in your market. If you’re just pulling averages for the market, you’re comparing the median HOUSE (i.e. a certain number of bedrooms PLUS private land, PLUS private amenities, ect) with average rental prices (i.e. a certain number of rooms in a SHARED building with SHARED amenities and SHARED parti walls, ect).

      A straight comparison between a home rental and a home sale will absolutely show rentals being more expensive than a purchase.

      Edit: The only exception to this would be if you purchased the house at the peak of a housing bubble, and are now renting the house out after the bubble has popped and so you are unable to sell without taking a loss.

      • ∟⊔⊤∦∣≶
        link
        English
        19 months ago

        Trivial. I even managed to find a house well under 1 mil. Weekly payments are over $1k for a mortgage. Compared with rental properties of similar size in same area where rent is around $600 per week.

        A straight comparison between a home rental and a home sale will absolutely show rentals being more expensive than a purchase.

        Clearly, it does not.