In a move that critics are calling “one of the most tasteless events I’ve ever heard of,” Berkeley landlords are celebrating the end of eviction protections in the East Bay city with a cocktail party.
The Berkeley Property Owners Association, a trade group for rental property owners in Berkeley, apparently believes regaining the right to throw people out of their homes is cause for celebration — or at least a networking event. The “Fall Social Mixer: Celebrating the End of the Eviction Moratorium” is set for the evening of Sept. 12; the event was first spotted by Berkeleyside.
Berkeley, like many other Bay Area municipalities, began a moratorium on most evictions at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The moratorium lasted over three years but expired on Sept. 1, 2023.
It’s one thing to take a risk of a shitty tenant. It’s another to have a shitty tenant who is abusing emergency rules free of consequences.
Some asshole who signs a lease, trashes the place, refuses to pay a dime in rent and then refuses to vacate just ends up getting subsidized by everyone who doesn’t do any of that.
I get that landlords aren’t the most sympathetic group always but eviction is a necessary legal remedy to keep rental housing affordable and available for responsible people.
Either the courts need to be processing evictions in a timely manner and following the law or landlords need to be able to regain their property by other means. Having the government tell them that they are forced to keep providing services to an abusive tenant who is taking advantage will just force out anyone too small to amortize out that risk to hundreds of other tenants and ensure the entire rental market is owned by faceless investors and giant megacorps and that rental prices will continue to skyrocket.
There’s more people then houses in the US, so not really. The necessary remedy is making sure everyone only has one.
Yeah, there’s more houses than people in the US. Are you going to relocate people from vibrant city centers to dying small towns with dilapidated, vacant houses with leaking roofs and bad electricals? Not everyone wants to live in Buttfuck, Kansas