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.
Your first two paragraphs prove my point rather than detracting from it.
The fact that landlords will front a “shitload” more and developers are building for it is the problem. There’s no reason those apartments couldn’t be sold to aspiring home owners except that they are priced out of the market by the effects you’re describing.
Also I don’t live in the USA and the problem I’m describing happens worldwide. Defining and arguing it in terms of perceived American exceptionalism is unhelpful.
This is one part of the solution to the actual problem that I describe in my post. There are certainly other parts of the solution as well, from ending rent control policies all the way up to government-funded multi-family housing (“projects” in the US and “council estates” in the UK). None are sufficient on their own.
Landlords didn’t fuck up the housing market. If given free reign to build, they would build like ants, and housing prices would fall. We have vastly insufficient supply compared to demand.
Homeowners don’t buy apartments because no family needs 120 rooms.
This is not solely an American phenomenon, but as I am American, I use examples I am familiar with. You will find similar market capture among homeowners anywhere you see housing prices skyrocketing. Feel free to test it for yourself, or I can find you examples of you want (but it’ll take me a while as I am unaware of the specific zoning policies to search for, worldwide).
Landlords and real estate developers are sometimes the same entity, and often times not.
I guarantee you’ll find many landlords that understand fixed supply is their friend, and are happy to sit on and increasingly overcharge for what they have.
I like a lot of your arguments, clearly homeowners are the main agitator against densely developed housing - but this is wrong. Developers and investors seek markets rather than meet demand. This is why frequently you will see new buildings go up are only luxury studio apartments, 5 over 1 student housing made of cardboard and plastic. You’re picking San Francisco, I’ll pick NYC. In NYC a lot of commercial space landlords never lower prices and are searching for specific chains like starbucks or grocery stores because those massive companies can meet the massive prices. Capitalists create inefficiencies in order to exploit others for personal gain. That’s the whole fucking game.
They have no reason to lower pricing on land because there’s no land to build on. No sane person is going to sell land in NYC below market. Demolish houses and build multi-family housing.
Of course they build nice apartments - they want to maximize ROI. That still increases net supply and slows price growth (only slows it though, because we still have a dramatic supply:demand I equivalency)