An Oakland-based mom-and-pop landlord is donating thousands of dollars he raised during a three-day hunger strike this week protesting an Alameda County proposal to extend its COVID eviction moratorium to other distressed small property owners.
George Wu began his protest Feb. 26 at a county administrative building after he said he was struggling to make up for more than $120,000 in unpaid rent from area tenants.
“Our wealth comes from our painstaking labor,” Wu told Epoch Times’ sister television station NTD on Sunday. “I’m not against the government protecting tenants, but the government needs to find the middle ground.”
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the county’s moratorium has been in effect to protect renters from being evicted due to financial hardship. But some small-scale landlords, like Wu and others that joined him during his protest, are saying enough is enough.
Wu ended his strike Feb. 28 after the Alameda County Board of Supervisors spent hours discussing and hearing public comments on the possibility of extending the moratorium from the end of April until mid-summer.
Ultimately, the supervisors decided not to extend the protection and to terminate the moratorium on April 29 as planned.
At the onset of his protest and out of desperation, Wu started a GoFundMe campaign, which has received more than $30,000 in donations.
In a statement provided by the Bay Area Housing Network—a nonprofit housing group representing over 1,000 landlords—Wu said he will donate the money to fight for the legal rights of all landlords and only take expenses for his hunger strike.
“Although one of the hunger strike’s goals … has been achieved, the harm and economic losses caused to landlords have not been resolved,” the nonprofit said in a statement Feb. 28 to NTD.
Three years in, some landlords are saying tenants have taken advantage of the well-intentioned policies designed to assist those hit hard economically during the shelter-in-place order in the early days of the pandemic.
They do not have to provide proof of financial hardship due to COVID-19, according to Alameda County’s moratorium guidelines. The regulations do, however, require tenants to pay back missed rent within a year of the first missed month. However, landlords are not allowed to evict them if they fail to do so.
But Wu is just one of many landlords who say they are in trouble.
“We are not against tenants,” Jenny Zhao, founding member of the Bay Area Housing Network told The Epoch Times. “We think as a society, we need to help those in need.”
But that burden shouldn’t fall exclusively on small landlords, Zhao said. Instead, the county should provide compensation to landlords who have not been paid rent, in some cases, for years.
During the Feb. 28 county board meeting, some landlords and small property owners detailed struggles of losing their livelihoods, tenants refusing to pay, and plans to leave the state.
Oakland property owner Ann McClain told the board that “there’s something wrong with the program” because her tenant only comes to the apartment once a month with his friends.
“He lives elsewhere,” she told the board. “And he owes me more than $15,000 in rent.”
The California Apartment Association previously urged the supervisors to promptly offer financial assistance to rental housing providers who are still awaiting payment.
And what’s owed is adding up.
Outstanding rent debt in the Bay Area—which has nine counties—is estimated to be as high as $3 billion, according to Derek Barnes, CEO of the East Bay Rental Housing Association, with Alameda County alone accounting for a large chunk of that figure.
According to Barnes, the rent arrears in Alameda County are estimated to be between $700 million and $1 billion. It’s also plausible, he said, Oakland may be responsible for $360 to $640 million of this amount.
“It’s also worth noting that federal and state emergency rental assistance has also been exhausted,” Barnes wrote on the association’s website Feb. 27.
According to the housing association, roughly 30,000 households across Alameda County have an average of unpaid rent of $30,000 owed to landlords.
While the state’s eviction moratorium expired in September 2021, a few counties in California, like Alameda County, have chosen to extend it. Los Angeles County voted in January to extend its moratorium until the end of March.
“The original idea of the moratorium was to make it so people didn’t have to go out when COVID was raging,” property owner Phyllis Horneman told Epoch Times’ NTD. “Everybody can go back to work now. So, what’s left are politicians that are too weak, they’re afraid to get rid of the moratorium.”
But there may be another problem on the horizon, East Bay Community Law Center staff attorney Laura Bixby told the supervisors.
While the law center—which provides legal services for low income communities—supported Alameda County extending its moratorium to this summer to allow everyone to adjust, Bixby said “the court system will be completely overwhelmed” and unable to process the lawsuits that will arise, as landlords will have no choice but to sue tenants to collect rent.
Bixby urged the board to assist tenants who are actually struggling to get back on their feet from COVID to obtain proper legal assistance.
Some legal proceedings are already underway.
The Oakland-based non-profit group Housing Providers of America, alongside five small property owners, initiated legal proceedings against the city and county last March.
The group is seeking to challenge the legality of the eviction moratoriums, arguing that they infringe upon the constitutional rights of landlords.
Apartment Owners Association of California President Jeff Faller told the board Tuesday “the helping of the poor should not be placed on the backs of rental property owners.”
“Is housing a human right or is housing part of the American dream?” he asked.
