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.
Access to shelter is a human right, but access to a rental property requires an agreement between the tenant and the property owner.
Where does the boogeyman capitalism figure into upholding your end of the bargain? If you're unable to work, there's an (admittedly minimal for a Western nation) safety net in place and countless charities willing to assist. You still have to contribute to society. Working isn't the only way.
The part where the threat of homelessness is coercive.
For food there is a shitty safety net here. For rent, it is abysmal. It's incredibly difficult to get help with rent, so saying there is countless charities willing to assist is grossly misleading. Social workers always recommend paying rent instead of food for this very reason.
Being unable to work isn't the only problem. There are next to no places in the U.S. where the minimum wage will cover the rent of a 1bd apartment. Landlords shouldn't exist in the first place, they are just leeches.
Well foxes and rabbits and blue jays don't have capitalism or government, but if they don't put in some work to eat and get shelter, then they won't survive either. That isn't a "threat," that's a physical truth of the universe that has existed for millennia. Nothing is achieved without work and input.
That's not a good world. We shouldn't seek to emulate it. We are higher beings than other animals, and we should act as such. We have more than enough for everybody to have shelter and safety, yet we instead choose a system that prevents all from having it.
I never said otherwise.