Some Oakland Landords Violating Eviction Moratorium, City Can Take Action Against Lawbreakers
ONN – Some Oakland Landords Violating Eviction Moratorium, City Can Take Action Against Lawbreakers
A number of viewers have reported to me, unfortunately, that they are being harassed by either their landlord, or lawyers representing the landlords, and basically being told to get out. In other words, they’re trying to evict them because of non-payment of rent.
This is happening as recently as today: to one of my viewers who happens to be disabled, and reached out to me. I, in turn, had reached out to number people in the City of Oakland.
Here is the message: The Oakland City Council’s action establishes a moratorium on the evictions, and comes with an enforcement capability by the city itself. if the City of Oakland chooses to enforce that – and remember it has the police power to do so – it could, at least in one instance depending on the individual case, end with a landlord or even the lawyer violating the law find (and in one case depending on that person’s behavior) themselves in jail.
So follow the law: back off on tenants. It is not the purpose of the law to allow a tenant to skip out on paying rent. No. Every tenant is expected to pay their rent, and when the moratorium is lifted, then the landlord can go about collecting for unpaid rent.
Hopefully, in the best case, the federal government steps in and provides enough money such that tenants who are in arrears are able to catch up.
The City of Oakland’s eviction moratorium law also has a “Good Samaritan” provision, where lawyers are encouraged to reduce the amount that’s owed by the tenant. And in many cases, considering the gigantic unemployment numbers that face the United States and indeed the world, that’s quite desirable.
So this isn’t business as usual. We’re in a crisis. You can’t call people as if it’s business as usual, harass them, threaten and frighten them. Those actions are illegal in the City of Oakland, which, far more than many cities in the United States, if not the world, has an excellent mechanism to punish you for such behavior.
The best action is to stop and work as a partner with your tenants.
Stay tuned.
Note from Zennie62Media and Oakland News Now: this video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62-created and owned social media pages. The overall objective is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. Now, news is reported with a smartphone: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners.