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.
Yes, you should be always able to evict people from your property no matter the reason.
Tenant is dating a black person and you don’t like black people? Kick them out! It’s your property!
Literally yes. If that was the case, the landlord would be totally insane and be hurting his income. As long as the tenant pays and behaves properly I bet the landlord prefers money to personal views.
Idk what to tell you. If you see neither the flaws in that logic nor the consequences, you're either too far gone for me to teach you, or you're just trolling.
Yeah fuck contracts!
The moratorium already did that.
Yeah well the thing about contracts is that they rely on the government to enforce them, and the sovereign has always been free to abdicate such enforcement.
That's why racial restrictive covenants were first found illegal, even though there is no state action in the covenant itself.
State and local governments are explicitly denied that power by the federal Constitution.
There is no Constitutional right to have the government enforce your contract. I'm not talking about formation and performance, I'm talking about enforcement. The Contracts Clause has nothing to do with enforcement by the courts.
The right to petition the government for redress of grievances is enumerated in the First Amendment
The Contracts Clause prohibits states from passing laws to prevent one of the parties to a contract from enforcing their rights in court, which is exactly what the moratorium did.
The right to sue, as between two private litigants. is controlled by due process analysis. There is certainly no right to win your case, or to have a petition resolved in your favor.
Every contract imputes all existing laws but more importantly for present discussion, all existing rights of the sovereign.
Public policy can change and can absolutely be asserted to outweigh existing contractual rights and remedies, it can vitiate the right to petition and the right to be free of government interference with contracts. Anything you read about the contracts clause today will always end with the fact that it is now basically impotent, with exceptions that have completely swallowed the rule.
Indeed, the eviction moratorium was upheld by multiple courts, as were past moratoria on things such as mortgage foreclosures.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-13/lance-elvy-sentenced-setting-landlord-on-fire-townsville/102852510
He got that psycho neckbeard look. At least now we know what kind of people hate landlords.
He's the good guy in this story bud. ;)
Edgy.