If you were a landlord and wanted to evict a tenant of who had been charged with dealing heroin, who possessed illegal firearms, and whose apartment was filled with items apparently stolen from local stores, would you be legally able to?
Let me back up for a moment and ask a different question. Would you have the moral right to evict such a criminal tenant? I should think the answer is a resounding YES. Even if you knew that the eviction would result in your former tenant being made homeless, I believe you’d be morally entitled to do it. None of us has the responsibility of providing safe haven for lawbreakers.
Now to the question of, Do you have the legal right to evict a criminal from your property? For generations, no sane person would have disagreed that a landlord is allowed to evict a known criminal from renting his property. But, of course, sanity is an increasingly rare commodity in woke or progressive cities like Oakland. These are the people who argued that prisons should be shut down, that shoplifters have a right to steal (“redistribution of wealth by other means”), and that no one under the age of 25 should be charged with a felony. We rightfully fired Pamela Price and Sheng Thao for such insidious beliefs, but believe me, the permanent bureaucracy remains in place, and their careers are devoted to maintaining wokeness. We saw evidence of that just a few weeks ago, when the Oakland City Council, acting on the advice of outgoing City Attorney Barbara Parker, repealed the city’s Eviction for Nuisance and Illegal Activity Ordinance.
The original Ordinance was finalized in 2014, in response to “a significant problem wherein owners of rental property have tenants who commit illegal acts on the property or use it to further illegal activities.” In the period 2010-2014, crime in Oakland had hit unprecedented highs. In 2012, for instance, the crime rate in Oakland was 400% higher than in either California or the U.S. as a whole. Thus the city passed the Eviction Ordinance as part of its new Health and Safety Code, which not only allowed landlords to evict criminals but “required” them to do so.
How different things are today. Just ten years ago Oakland took decisive steps in favor of public safety. Now, on the eve of her departure from office, Parker urged the City Council to “repeal the Nuisance Eviction Ordinance,” and the City Council obediently complied. What was Parker’s reasoning? You guessed it. “Such policies,” she argued, “have a discriminatory impact on people of color.”
There they go again. Racism, racism, racism, ad nauseum. It’s the old “disparities” crap. Social justice warriors like Parker find racism under every bed, in every nook and cranny, around every corner. They can never bring themselves to acknowledge that more people of color are impacted by the Eviction Ordinance because far more people of color commit crimes than either Whites or Asians. Were they to admit this truth, their entire ideology of social justice would collapse as thoroughly as the18th century Phlogiston theory.
Who sponsored the Repeal measure in the City Council? Why, that stammering champion of the common people, Dan Kalb, of course. In the Council’s vote, there was a tie: Kalb, Kaplan, Fife and Bas voted “aye.” Sheng Thao, then mayor, was called in to break the tie. She, too, voted “aye,” and the Eviction for Nuisance and Illegal Activity Ordinance was repealed.
So if you’re that homeowner who discovers your tenant is dealing heroin, has a closet full of illegal weapons, and is a serial retail thief, guess what? The City of Oakland will no longer allow you to evict that criminal from your property. This is a case, once again, of Oakland government siding with criminals over the legitimate concerns of—not just landlords—but of public safety. We’re thankfully rid of Kalb, Thao and Kaplan (or will be soon), but Bas and Fife remain, to continue their woke crusade of tyranny and racism. In the name of God, when will this woke insanity end?
Steve Heimoff