Landlords vs. Tenants?

My story started 3 years ago. It’s confusing and winding and I’m still learning the best way to tell it.

One thing I can tell you for sure, though, is that I was terrified of telling my story, at first.

If you live in a liberal city, you may be familiar with the hatred of landlords. Heck, if you live anywhere, you certainly understand the concept of a slumlord, someone who doesn’t maintain their property, but still charges maximum rent.

Tenants rights has become a huge issue as home ownership in the United States slips further from a reality for middle-class Americans. And, I agree tenant’s rights are important (more details on my thoughts on this topic here), and I’ve voted for nearly all of the pro-tenant laws since I moved to the SF Bay Area. Everyone I know in this area is pro-tenant. Of course the big, bad corporate landlord shouldn’t be able to take advantage of poor tenants!

But I didn’t know that we already had excellent tenants rights in place in Oakland. So excellent, in fact, that it allows bad actor tenants to harm small, “mom-and-pop” landlords, like me.

I was uncomfortable with the term, “landlord,” at first. To be honest, I barely identified as one. Yes, I owned my home, but I lived there. And, renting out a room to a housemate hardly seemed to put me in the same category as a corporate landlord who owned hundreds of properties. Other terms like, “housing provider,” “small landlord,” and “mom-and-pop landlord” don’t quite fit the bill. But, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. “Landlord” is the easiest to understand.

My housemate, Hera* (name is changed), has written many Facebook posts spitting vitriol about her “landlord.” What’s interesting is that when she throws this term around, those on the receiving end immediately nod in agreement. It doesn’t matter whether what she says is true. It doesn’t matter that her “landlord” is a single mom with 2 kids living in the home with her. It doesn’t matter if she hasn’t paid rent for months and years. It doesn’t matter if she’s made my life a living hell in order to try to get me to make a fatal error that will get me sued. And, she uses it as fuel for the fire and to gain people to her side. Of course I’m evil! I’m a landlord! It’s a given. No matter what I did or didn’t do, it was wrong, because I dared own a home and rent a room.

So, yeah, I was scared. I joined a group of people equally upset about the eviction moratorium. People who had worse stories than me, like Avinash Jha and Ami Shah, who rented their house to someone who didn’t pay, but ran an Airbnb out of it illegally. I met with Jha, Shah, and others. What were our concerns with going public? Death threats. That’s right, we have all been terrified by our tenants to the point where we are scared that they will come after us. We are scared that the tenants rights groups, who spill vitriol about landlords and lump all people who rent out spaces together as evil would find a way to come after us. It was terrifying.

So, I tentatively put a few feelers out there. I posted about the eviction moratorium and a little about my own story. Mostly, my Facebook friends ignored them.

Then, I began to post more, this time asking my Facebook friends to please correct me and tell me, either publicly on my posts or privately, whether I was in the wrong here. Was I evil and mean for wanting someone to leave the home I lived in with my 2 children? Especially after years, when my daughter is getting older and I need the space for the extra bedroom we wanted to use?

No one seemed to think so. Instead, I found overwhelming support. This is an unprecedented situation and I am in one of the worst kinds. And, even I don’t have it as bad as many others. I may post the other stories that haven’t been told, eventually.

But, what I still don’t see is action. I don’t see tenants and landlords getting together and fighting for reason. Yes, protections should exist, but there must be exceptions for people like me. And the eviction moratorium doesn’t even make sense. Why are landlords responsible to cover the costs of housing someone, when the government will not?

And, why are landlords evil for wanting to live in their own homes, or, I don’t know, be able to pay the mortgage? Why is this pitted as tenant vs. landlord when homelessness and housing insecurity affects us all?

I don’t have answers, but I hope you will read this and take action. Write the Oakland City Council. Speak at a council meeting. Heck, write me and ask how you can help! Do something. Please.