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.


  • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It’s quite a big distinction to me, I’m not a fucking construction worker. Gross. I also don’t usually pay anybody to build a house, I mostly scoop up already existing homes whenever there’s a market crash and the lazy poors get foreclosed on.

    • nbafantest@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So when you “Scoop up existing homes” you don’t realize you’re paying the person for paying the builders?

      I like this “i didnt lay every single atom of the house” argument lol

      • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        No, I’m quite literally not, in any way. I’ll take just one of my many investment properties to explain to you how dumb you’re being. This house was built in a suburb of San Diego in 1979 and sold for $25,000. The people who built it are possibly dead by now and were, all together paid $25,000 for the land together with the house that they built. It changed hands many times, at some point a bank foreclosed on whoever was living there, and I bought it from the bank. The house is worth $775,000 dollars now and I rent it out for $3,500 a month. Every 7 months I make more money renting out this house than the people who built it were ever paid for doing that, and me buying it had absolutely nothing at all to do with it getting built.

        Please stop trying to make me out to be a construction worker. I’m not, I’m a landlord and proud of it.

        • nbafantest@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That is quite literally a chain of you paying the person who paid the person who built the house lol

          • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Your argument is that there is NOT a significant difference between me building a house vs me buying a house 50 years later. As for the properties that I’ve put into my infant son’s name already, he pretty much built those houses himself right? No difference.

            Take the L you fucking loser. You will never smear my son and I as being measly construction workers.

            • nbafantest@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              There isn’t lol

              it’s literally just a chain of people paying people to pay the builders lol

              • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                No it’s not. The value of my house has literally nothing to do with how much it cost to build, it’s so wildly disconnected, I used the actual numbers to show you that and you’re still being an insufferable moron about it.

                • nbafantest@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  The value doesn’t matter at all lol

                  You’re still paying people for paying the builders lol

                  This is quite funny

                  • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    I got 15 of my properties from my father. I paid nothing at all for them, to anybody.

                  • havokdj@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Brother, I hope you are aware that you are arguing with one of the most obvious trolls of all time.

                    I have to admit, he’s actually pretty good, more comedy than flat out just anger inducing.