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.

  • Saik0English
    1•1 year ago

    Let me spell it out for you, because even though I found over 12,000 apartments for sale, that number is still eclipsed by the number of chromosomes you have.

    None of which are apartments per any definition used in the USA… Which is the context of this whole thread.

    I see your “context” that you so diligently learned how to use a digital highlighter for. Did you read what you wrote?

    Here’s the FULL post… I’m going to bold something…

    What, you gonna tear down the apartment buildings? You know you can just sell people the deeds to their apartments. That’s already in practice, in places with a shitload less homeless people.

    To which… in my immediate response I stated…

    Considering that Apartments are not deeded per unit.

    Further,

    in places with a shitload less homeless people.

    Is not only vague, but doesn’t actually communicate anything meaningful at all as literally every country has a homelessness problem, but let’s put that aside and let’s just assume that we all understood you mean overseas somewhere.

    In the USA… which is where this discussion is taking place under the context of. An Apartment is not separately deeded, as evidenced by the literal evidence I’ve shown you. You’re response has effectively been “well this other country defines it as something else”. I’ve even already given you the correct term here for what I believe you’re referencing. That is a Condominium… Or Condo for short.

    An Apartment != Condo. Period. When you can realize that, then the conversation can continue. So for you to assume that “Apartment” here in the USA = “Apartment” from whatever the bumble-fuck you’re from… Is already wrong. And your own “evidence” of 12000 apartment proves that point. Yet you don’t see it and somehow I’m a moron?

    Also we’re not on reddit, you don’t have to try and add a pithy mic drop destruction 100 big chungus among sus moment, knock that shit off.

    Yet here you are… acting like a teenager. You could literally just admit that you have no idea what the terms used in the USA are for these things… and move the fuck on. Instead you act like a petulant child.

    But let’s back up just a smidge… https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apartment

    a room or set of rooms fitted especially with housekeeping facilities and usually leased as a dwelling

    So even definitionally you’re wrong, otherwise the definition wouldn’t include the word leased.

    vs…https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/condominium

    individual ownership of a unit in a multiunit structure (such as an apartment building) or on land owned in common (such as a town house complex)

    Well fuck me… Which one describes what you’ve explained that you believe “apartment” to mean? Especially when you stated…

    It’s really not even hard to imagine how this works, either. A real estate company builds the building, each apartment is owned by its occupant, they each use their equal share of ownership to vote in the building’s resident union, appoint a president if they want, pool funds for building-wide repairs, establish dues or not, etc.

    But that’s been the point the whole time. Oftentimes it requires drawing up contracts that 100% of the tenants agree on that share the building. Your pie in the sky bullshit thought is that 1 person out of a 30 unit building will be able to buy the one unit they have and the rest can keep renting (or vice-versa) that makes it literally impossible for all the parties to sign onto a MCR to be recognized as 30 separate deeds within a single overarching property. Your own quote above even implicitly acknowledges this when you stated " A real estate company builds the building" as in it was intended to be condos from the start. But see… rather than recognizing that you could be wrong especially with how apartments might be recognized in the USA. You instead turned into a frothing lunatic.

    Feel free to keep ad hominem attacking me though. Makes your case real strong! I’m not grasping at any straws. You’ve failed to communicate effectively and now you’ve gone off the deep end like winning arguments on the internet is the only thing that keeps you emotionally stable.

    And you have the audacity to call me dense? Motherfucker

    Just remember… you started it ;)

    • @[email protected]English
      0•1 year ago

      Nope, no decency.

      So you’re aware, I did make sure to not read it past the first words. You’ll never get to hear what you have to say heard by me.