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.


  • @MotoAsh
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    271 year ago

    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.

    • ∟⊔⊤∦∣≶
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      -21 year ago

      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.

    • @BURN
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      -41 year ago

      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.

      • Neuromancer
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        31 year ago

        There are times in my life where I didn’t want to own. For some reason everyone here thinks everyone wants to own.

        If they want afford rent. They can’t afford a home to own.

        This year alone if spent 50k on mine outside of the mortgage.

        There seems to be some weird magical thinking that homes would be half the cost of there were no landlords. That isn’t true at all.

        • @MotoAsh
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          11 year ago

          No one is under that illusion, you idiot. Things break in a rental, too, but at least when you own it, you donpt have to wait three weeks for the land lord to get off their ass and call the one lazy SoB they have a contract with that’ll be out in one to three more weeks…

          • Neuromancer
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            01 year ago

            Idiot. Most people here are claiming exactly that.

            I’ve never had to wait more than a few hours to get someone to look at something when I was renting.