Possibly the most appalling example of Covid tyranny occurred when a federal agency arbitrarily did what the USSR’s Red Army could not do: terminate our property rights.

From the Federal Register, dated September 4, 2020:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), located within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announces the issuance of an Order under Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act to temporarily halt residential evictions to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.

With this agency order, the deed to every rental property in the United States passed from its previous owner to the federal government. The former owners are still responsible for upkeep, but are only allowed to collect rent in accordance with the vagaries of bureaucrats.

Despite recent attempts to revive it, the last of Covid hysteria is petering out. The decree above is no longer in force for the time being, even at the local level in liberal enclaves. But once the fundamental right to own property has been determined to be contingent on government whims, it will remain under relentless assault:

A group of renters in the expensive California suburb Berkeley stormed an event where landlords were celebrating the end of a COVID-era ban on evictions, plunging the event into violence and sparking a brawl that saw an elderly landlord get punched in the face.

You can’t make a socialist omelet without breaking some eggs — or faces.

The bayside city was among the last in Alameda County to abolish the protection that landlords claim was being used as cover for widespread rent avoidance.

Landlords claim? Allowing people to live on someone else’s property on an involuntary basis without paying rent is the sole purpose of an eviction moratorium.

The unemployment rate in Berkeley is 3.8 percent – on par with the national average – and the median rent is $3,800. It is known to be a wealthy enclave with a deeply academic community thanks to its eponymous college. …

Median household income in the Frisco suburb tops $97,000 according to the US Census.

Some of the useless moonbats infesting Berserkeley lived effectively as squatters, costing the rightful owners of their homes tens of thousands of dollars over the past several years.

The Berkeley Property Owners Association, naively hoping the nightmare to be over, held a celebration in a bar.

But more than 100 angry renters crashed the soiree, calling it ‘deeply cruel’.

The moonbats countered this cruelty with one of their mostly peaceful protests.

‘I went around and told our members to remain quiet, and peaceful and not engage, and they didn’t,’ BPOA President Krista Gulbransen told Berkeleyside.

The “Let’s Be Grownups” approach does not work with the woke.

Gulbransen herself was shoved to the ground as ‘multiple fights’ broke out after a group of protesters decided to enter the venue an hour into the party.

Predictably, the Berserkeley police refused to remove the moonbats, who in effect issue their orders. The mayor is Jesse Arreguin:

The self-described ‘unapologetic progressive’ previously sat on the city’s Rent Stabilization Board and has made it his mission to ‘restore Berkeley to the forefront of progressive leadership on the environment and social justice’.

“Social justice” means somebody else pays for everything.

Liberals are infamous for projecting their flaws onto their adversaries, but this is over the top; according to BPOA spokeswoman Becky Warren,

‘Their protest planning included language celebrating mass killing of landlords, celebrations by guillotine, and references to landlords as parasites.’

You read that correctly. The freeloading tapeworms regard the people whose property they demand to live on for free as “parasites.” This surreal inversion of reality accords with the twisted ideology Berkeley is infamous for.

How soon can we expect another national ban on evicting tenants who choose not to pay their rent? That all depends on who Mandy Cohen has been chatting with on the phone:

The fundamental rights that allow civilization to function took many centuries to develop. We are flushing away even the most basic (e.g., property ownership, assembly, and self-defense) by allowing people of this caliber to rule on an absolutist basis in the name of “public health.”

On tips from the Great Cornholio and Ed McAninch.

One Response to “Property Rights Hang on Bureaucrats’ Whims”

1. Moonbattery LA Government Sides With Airbnb Squatter - Moonbattery says:

   October 7, 2023 at 6:21 am

   […] we learned when the CDC surreally decreed that landlords could not insist that rent be paid, we no longer enjoy property rights in the decaying remnants of the USA. Also gone are rule of law and shame. This state of affairs […]