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.
Because they're antithetical? Every home owned by a landlord is one unavailable to renters, creating artificial scarcity in the house market, and driving up prices
That's not artificial scarcity. That's just scarcity. It's literally already owned.
It's scarcity in the sense that the market of available houses for people who want to live in one is lower than the number of houses not being lived in; because landlords own houses that they don't live in ...
This removes purchasable houses from the buyers market and inflates prices, as landlords make a return on the ownership in a way that house owners that live in their own house generally don't, meaning they can afford to outbid the average homeowner.
Most landlords don't rent houses, they rent apartments, and apartments are built by landlords fronting a shitload of capital.
No landlords, no apartments, which is a significantly worse housing issue than you see now.
Housing speculation (what you're talking about) is a consequence of a housing market that's been kneecapped by local zoning policies. These policies were not put in place by landlords, but by homeowners who wanted their homes to always go up in value. Landlords oppose these policies because they want to build more housing, because that's how they make money.
If you look at a "housing nightmare" like San Francisco, you can also add in that property taxes were frozen at purchase price, which means you're mad at grandmas in SF who have owned their home for 60 years and watched the value go up tenfold or more and laugh all the way to the bank, but then fall back on being grandmas when the idea of taxing them appropriately comes up.
https://bekinsmovingservices.com/blog/san-francisco-property-tax/#:~:text=What%20Is%20the%20San%20Francisco%20Property%20Tax%20Rate%3F&text=The%20base%20tax%20rate%20in,the%20inflation%20factor%20was%201.036%25.
Edit: you also have "Progressives" like Robert Reich who oppose building multi-family housing in their neighborhoods because they think it would make their neighborhood less attractive if the Poors were there.
https://freebeacon.com/satire/robert-reich-nimby/
And his actual letter, screenshotted https://systemicfailure.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/screen-shot-2020-08-04-at-7.47.05-pm.png
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)
Its scarcity because a tiny percentage of the population is holding a bunch of houses as an investment chip, not for shelter.
Societies everywhere have to decide: do you want people housed, do you want a few rich assholes? Hint: one leads to a more stable society than the other
wealth inequality is only growing so violence will increase at this rate
Scroll down. I responded to these claims already. Society as a whole may dislike the kneecapping of the housing market, but it's all locally controlled and people find all sorts of reasons to justify it to themselves (edit: this person literally justifies it to themselves in the next comment). Housing speculation is an obvious end result of this kneecapping of the market.
Homes can either be "nest eggs" or we can have enough housing. Can't be both.
Wealth inequality doesn't matter in any objective sense. It's all feelings. If one person was a quadrillionaire and everyone else had plenty of money to make ends meet and enjoy leisure time, no one would give a shit about the quadrillionaire.
Flat wrong, homes can still appreciate over time, you don't need 20% every 2 -3 years to be a 'nest egg'.
Housing regulations have failed to control foreign investors and airBNBs, its not locally controlled at all.
And nothing you said addressed the coming violence from a massive unhoused population with nothing to lose.
Ideally, homes will slightly depreciate over time, unless rehabbed.
Otherwise, housing prices, by definition, are going up.
This is not a credible threat.
Its not a threat, its a feature of the system https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15817728/#:~:text=The%20most%20well%2Destablished%20environmental,tend%20to%20be%20more%20violent.
the ultra rich are betting they can stay above the fray, but if you're mid rich you're going to have to buy a bunch of security equipment and isolate yourself from society more.
This paper is talking about lower-income people perpetuating crimes against one another which is not a "feature" unless you are a psychopath.
Thats not all it says. Income inequality and all violence are linked, including terrorism https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2766910
This both agrees with me that it's all feelings-based, and is a totally different study.
Also terrorism is not a feature unless you're a psychopath. Terrorism, by definition, involves the harm of innocents.
it agrees with me that there will be more violence, including terrorism. No idea what you're talking about with this 'feelings based' argument. Rich people's desire for more money is also feelings-based, it doesn't change the fact that it has cause and effect associated.
You'd understand what I meant if you read my first comment. Inequality is not a measure of any person's individual economic security. It's just a measure of difference between high and low. That difference is objectively irrelevant - what objectively matters is an individual's security and opportunity at the bottom of the difference.
Income inequality has subjective impacts, in that those at the bottom are more angry (justifiably or not) if other people are far more wealthy.
Human beings are not rational actors.
I've made this argument before and they followed up with land value increase as a retort. And I folded because it sounded true. Wouldn't land value always go up in a growing city? Maybe you would understand this better than me.
Land value may go up and offset some of your depreciation, but I don't see that as a bad thing. I don't want to punish homeowners specifically, just have housing reflect the reality of it's value over time if supply was sufficient.
Land value will rise less if we maximize use of land - this is why many people support things like LVTs that incentivize maximizing the value of your land.
With an acute shortage of housing, land skyrockets. If we build tall, land rises but much more slowly.
In order for this to be ok you'd also have to provide 0% interest loans, which is very fucking far from the case.
IMO part of the reason we're constantly chasing the whole value growth dragon is that in order for the structure to make any sense at all to people homes have to appreciate in value. Otherwise over the course of the 30 years you'll wind up paying double or near triple (depending upon interest rates) what the house is worth in order to hold it.
Edit: to a lesser extent, inflation is also a factor