Landlords Are Losing Their Homes — Here’s Why | Chris Moore

In Oakland, the eviction moratorium still exists. Can you tell us what's going on? The people that provide housing to the community in Oakland, California are considered evil. During the eviction moratorium, to ask a tenant to pay rent could be viewed as harassment to the tenant. Tenants can get advice from these groups, these lawyers, on how to avoid paying rent or sue the landlord. Correct. There's been many, many, many housing providers that have not received any rent for three years. My guest today is Chris Moore, board member with Bay Rental Housing Association. Today, he'll share with us his firsthand experience being a landlord in California and why he thinks the eviction moratorium is hurting the tenants. What you have with politicians and tenant advocates is housing's a human right, housing should be free for all. It sounds really good, but if you truly read the ordinance, it's bad for tenants. How is this going to impact the relationship of landlords and tenants going forward? The city leaders, the tenant activists, they want this adversarial relationship because it benefits them. I'm Siamak Khorrami, welcome to California Insider. Chris, it's great to have you on, welcome. Thank you, thanks for inviting me. We wanna talk to you about the eviction moratorium and where the state is headed with housing. You've done a lot of research on this. And you're a housing provider in Oakland, which the eviction moratorium still exists. Can you tell us what's going on? Yeah, so Oakland, I do provide housing in the community. So Oakland is actually the last city in the country to still be deciding how long they're gonna extend their eviction moratorium. The extension, which is gonna probably start between May and August, under the law, technically they have to show some, what they call a COVID nexus, but as written, they don't need to show documentation or anything like that. They can just kind of say, hey, I've had an issue under COVID, ranging from a health issue to maybe a loss of a job at any time during COVID. And that would give them the opportunity to continue to not pay rent through August 31st. So the moratorium in Oakland, you're a housing provider there, has it affected the relationship between landlords and tenants? I think it has, yeah. What's been created by whether it's the politicians or the maybe tenant advocates, they've created this division between housing providers and renters. Both are, housing providers need renters. They don't wanna have a division. And renters need housing providers because they need a place to live. But the moratorium specifically, there's been a, the market has been communicated to and what you have with politicians and tenant advocates is housing's a human right. Housing should be free for all. And while 80% of the renters actually are, they kind of generally don't believe in those concepts, you have 10 to 20% that are feeling more entitled, right? And they hear this messaging and they believe that housing is a human right and they should be able to get housing for free, right? Or very low cost. And so what the moratorium did was, it said basically there's an eviction moratorium for any reason, literally for almost any reason. So you didn't have to pay rent, you could disturb other tenants in the building and you could not be evicted for that reason. And it was all driven by COVID of course. And in the beginning, it was a reasonable approach, right? People did lose jobs initially and had COVID, but now we're 37 months into it in Oakland and they're looking at extending it for another four months. Within three years, yeah. Yeah, it's been three years and there's been many, many, many housing providers that have not received any rent for three years, for over three years. And there's a recent study, some early data from it is that of those who have not received money, 15% are in foreclosure. And we're talking a sign of thousands, right? That are providing housing to community that are moving into foreclosure. And the reason it, a lot of the discussion points you hear from the, I refer to them as anti-housing crowd, but it's kind of the politicians and the tenant advocates is that it's these corporates that are coming in and they're trying to evict and push people out and that's why the eviction moratorium was put in. The reality is the corporates have financing and they can kind of survive. They have lawyers, they have financing that they can survive through this. It's the small community mom and pop, some will call it, but the community housing provider that may have a two bedroom house. They might be in a duplex and they're renting out one side. They're not capitalized to survive three years of not receiving rent. On top of that, they had to pay their property taxes on time. They've had to pay their business taxes or any other taxes on time. Yet, they're not allowed to collect any revenue from any income. Literally, Tems do not have to pay anything. Old country soaps are handcrafted, long lasting soap bars made on a farm in South Dakota with soothing natural ingredients without harsh chemicals that can dry out your skin. They can produce a creamy lather unlike anything you've tried before. Just a great American made product that will leave your skin feeling soft and smooth all day long. The soap is multi-purpose. You can also use it for your hair. It's great for shaving and safe for pets. Every order comes with an exfoliating soap bag. It can hold smaller pieces of soap and can prevent soap bars from slipping out of the hand. After each use, just leave the soap bar inside and hang dry. It will last a long time. This company does not sell on Amazon. So go to oldcountrysoap.com and reward yourself and your loved ones. Use promo code INSIDER and get an exclusive 20% off your order. Let's support a company that brings back traditional American values and American manufacturing. Now let's go back to the interview. And when we had Jonathan Madison, the eviction lawyer on the show, he told us of cases where people had the money but they were not paying the rent. So there's lots of different examples. I know a case of a gentleman. He was on a hunger strike actually for Alameda County. So he actually, his tenant was not paying rent. His tenant actually moved out of his triplex and rented the room to somebody else. So he was collecting rent. And then moved out and moved somewhere else. There's lots of cases where people, they didn't lose their jobs. They, as far as we know, they didn't have a, maybe they had COVID but they didn't have a significant impact. And, but because they were enabled by the city leaders to, and Alameda County as well, to not pay rent because there was no proof that they couldn't pay rent and there was no means test also. So that's what you get. And there's many cases. And so we work with and I talk with a number of, the organization I'm part of, Ibra, has 1500 housing providers. We represent about 45,000 units in Alameda and Contra Costa County. And so we talk to people all the time and we hear these stories about it's common where a renter is not paying rent yet they're showing up with new BMWs or they're showing up with new Mercedes or showing up with new cars. Meanwhile, the housing provider is trying to pay their property tax. They're not going on vacation. They're doing all the maintenance themselves. And so expenses are increasing and they're not collecting any rent. So that is, that's one side of the problem is the rent payment. The other side of the problem during the pandemic is because there's almost no opportunity to evict is you have what you can have as bad actor tenants who are partying all night or they're selling drugs out of their units or they're making noise all the time. They're frustrating the rest of the tenants to the point where the good tenants or tenants that are not bad actors, they're moving out, right? So this has significantly impacted the community, particularly East Oakland, West Oakland, where these, they're undercapitalized compared to some of the more main parts of downtown Oakland where you have more corporates that can withstand what's going on in this kind of what's called the draconian eviction moratorium. Now, are there examples of tenants threatening to sue the housing providers? So this is another kind of issue in that a lot of the ordinances that are written around, whether it's the eviction moratorium or other rental regulation ordinances, the language is purposely kept very vague, right? And I can get into that, but to your question about harassment, during the eviction moratorium, to ask a tenant to pay rent, it could be viewed as harassment to the tenant. So you could send them the monthly statement saying this is what's, oh, but to go and say, hey, when are you gonna pay this or how? That could be viewed as harassment. Whereas, yeah, and out of that, the tenants will or could go to free legal services, which are paid for by the housing providers in Oakland. So we're all taxed $101 per unit. That goes, part of that goes into a legal fund at tenant advocates organizations. So then they provide lawyers free legal services to tenants who can come back and threaten to sue. So tenants can get advice from these groups, these lawyers on how to avoid paying rent or sue the landlord. Correct. Yeah, I mean, it's in place. These services are in place. It's meant to be a good thing. Because sometimes the housing provider or landlord might actually do something bad. There's bad actors on both sides, right? There's bad actors on the housing provider side. There's bad actors on tenant side. So there's free legal services provided to tenants because the laws and the ordinance have been written. They're so complex. Very few people truly understand what's in there. And they're overlapping and just building on top of each. So they do need legal services in some way to understand their rights. But because also those same tenant lawyers that are, and some of the tenant activist organizations are actually writing the ordinances, you see things that are written with a lot of vagueness to it and it gives the opportunity for those lawyers to provide those legal services and then come in, threaten harassment or come in with a lot of other things to make it difficult for the housing provider to evict. Okay, but what happens is, particularly with small housing community, small housing providers, they don't have the funds to hire their own lawyers. And so it's used as a threat against them. And sometimes more than a threat, they're actually sued. And so they are, of course, impacted significantly. They might lose their rental property. They might lose the home that they're living in. Maybe they're renting a room because they're being sued by bad actor renters and potentially bad actor attorneys as well. Can you give us some examples of this, like how it would manifest? I'm familiar with one where there's a tenant who's not paying rent and they have, there's a small mold issue on their windows. But they will not allow- Is it in the inside or outside? Inside, yeah. So, sorry, yeah. The windows can get some mold on them. They would like that fixed, but they won't let the housing provider in to view it. And so they're working with a tenant activist lawyer. And that lawyer is saying, okay, if you want to come in and fix it, then you're going to need to move the tenant out to a hotel for X period of time and pay the hotel, of course. But also, that's under a just cause legislation that's counted as a move out. So you have to pay them, I think it's roughly $8,000 for that fee. But on top, in order to agree to this, we want the rest of the apartment remodeled throughout. So there's those kind of stories that are out there. So you have to put them in a hotel for a few weeks and then pay $8,000 for the move out. And then they want to remodel. The whole apartment, yeah. So it's kind of like, and if you don't do it, you're going to get sued for having mold, right? So you're sort of like caught in this and they won't let you in to do it. So these are the type of stories that are out there. And there's another- Amil, well, does that landlord make a lot of money from that unit? How's- Yeah, that particular, I don't know, it's probably a rent control, I'm sure it's a rent controlled unit. And I don't know the exact rent that they're earning on that, but it's not like they're earning huge profits on that. Is it going to be like a year or two of losses to pay for all this for? It would, I mean, you're talking potentially $20,000, $30,000 right? So it's depending on the remodel. So it could be, sure, it could be two years to make that back or more. And that's just, that's assuming groceries, right? If they don't have a mortgage, yeah. Exactly, yeah. I mean, it costs in Oakland, California, it can cost for a one bedroom, $1,100, $1,200, just an operating cost to operate a unit, depending on if you're paying for utilities, which you are in many cases. Of course, your mortgage and that, your interest payments on your mortgage. So it can cost a significant amount of money to operate in Oakland, California. And I mentioned before, you have 40% of renters that can be actually below, they're paying below cost essentially. And this is another rent control, issue with rent control. Really what's happening is the higher price marketing, market renters are subsidizing the long-term tenants that are in there. People don't understand that, but that's really what's happening. Now there's a philosophy in the state about housing is a human rights. And there's a law that they're trying to change the constitution of California and pushing this law in. Is that coming from the same philosophy that's in Oakland? Sure, maybe even started in Oakland or the Bay Area. So yeah, so housing is a human right is the mantra or that's what you hear quite a bit. I mean, if that's the case, do private housing providers need to provide that housing without any subsidy or income from the government? I think if housing is a human right, then the government needs to provide that housing. It's not the responsibility of private individuals to provide that. So are they trying to do that in a sense? Are they trying to use nonprofits to come in and do that? Are they doing something like that in Oakland? So here's kind of what some people believe is happening is that you had this perfect opportunity during the eviction moratorium. So there is a lot of thinking at the city council level in many of these cities that a not-for-profit can operate housing and the government for that matter can operate housing better than a private individual housing provider. It makes zero sense, right? Like an organization that has all this overhead for all their executives, how can they operate housing for less than a private individual? But that is the message and that is, so these not-for-profits are, of course, they're supporting city council members who do that. They help get the vote out for the city council members. What I'm saying is the perfect scenario is kind of happening is that the eviction moratorium took hold. They didn't pay people for between 20, they didn't pay housing providers for 22 to 36 months, 37 months and going. So they are well undercapitalized. 15% of them are gonna be under foreclosure. The not-for-profits right now are pitching something called naturally occurring foreclosures. It's not naturally occurring. They've put people out of business by not allowing them to collect rent. So the not-for-profits are saying they're raising money right now to say, we're gonna buy these naturally occurring foreclosures and then we'll operate them and they're saying they will keep it at the housing at below market pricing. And the next step in this is something called TOPA, Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act. There's something called the housing element in many communities. In California, every city has to create. Yeah, the arena housing element. Yes, the arena, exactly. So. The affordable housing component. Oakland and many other cities put in that they must study TOPA as part of their arena within two to three years. They must study and consider implementing it in the community. So what TOPA says is if I'm interested in selling a property, and that's any property in the community, any rental home in the community, I first have to let my tenants know and give them also all the operational data for the property. The tenant has the right then to assign their right of interest in the property to a not-for-profit in the community. And so within 30 days, they could come back and they write a note and say, hey, I'm interested in buying this property. That gives them then another 15 to 20 days to make an offer. And so they can come in and say, I would like to offer, let's say for a property, they're gonna offer a million dollars and they make an offer of a million. And so the housing provider might say, you know what, I think it's worth 1.2. So now, up until that point, it's illegal for the property owner to market the property. But now, after let's say 45 days, they can go out and market that property to the community. So let's say somebody comes back and you say, Chris, I'd like to buy your property for 1.2 million, I can say to you, okay, I'm interested in, oh, and you'll fund it within 30 days, right? So I say, okay, I'd like to sell that property to you, but I have to go back and, because they, because this not-for-profit expressed interest, I have to give them the first right of refusal. So now I go back to the housing provider, to the not-for-profit, and then I say, I have this offer for, a bona fide offer for 1.2 million. And they say, okay, I'm gonna give you 1.2 million. I can come up with the funds in 180 days. I have to accept that offer, because in theory, they matched the price. They don't have to match any other terms. There's not even a requirement for them to put a deposit down. So now, they can have 180 days to go out and try to find funding. If after 180 days, they don't find funding, I go back to you, you've moved on to something else, right? So now I have to start the process all over. I have to say, okay, I'm gonna sell out. Go to the tenants. I offer, you know, I tell them 30 days in advance. So you have to start this process all over. And there's a number of things that are going on here. One is, they wanna, one is, they just wanna make it difficult for you to sell the property, because the, in theory, the next owner's gonna come in and is gonna evict everybody. Not gonna happen, no way. That's just not how it works in Oakland, California. But that's one. The other is that by requiring a, you know, this first right of refusal to the not-for-profit, it devalues the property. Okay, so it's pushing down the value of the property. But the other killer here is, and why it doesn't work for tenants, is it's a false promise to tenants. So tenants may vote for this, and they may push for the community to do it, but there is a restriction on the housing that says it must fit, it must stay, there's actually a deed restriction that says you can't raise rents by a certain amount over time, okay? Or it's gotta be a certain percent. Rents have to be lower than the market. That kills off equity growth in the property. So if a tenant actually were to buy it, they're not gonna get, they're not gonna earn income on that, or they're not gonna get equity. They may get equity, but it's not gonna grow like it would for a non-TOPA property. So that's why we call it, it's a false promise, because they are not really gonna benefit from this transaction if they were able to qualify to buy it in the first place. Now, so you're saying that actually the eviction moratorium is causing some landlords to lose, like some housing providers and landlords to lose their homes because they couldn't pay the mortgage, and meanwhile the non-profits are gearing up to buy these? Yeah, so there's a lot of complexities going on here. So yes, so right now there are, you're starting to see organizations pop up and they call it, they're raising money to buy naturally occurring foreclosures, right? Which is happening because of the moratorium, right? It's not naturally occurring. I mean, it's basically, it's the eviction moratorium, people couldn't collect rent for 37 months, they're going bankrupt basically, and they're losing their property. So it's a perfect opportunity for the not-for-profits to come in and buy them on the cheap, and basically make a big profit off of it, right? And in fact, there's a law that Nancy Skinner passed at the state level, just to give an example, where they just didn't really think through the policy. So foreclosures in the state of California, they said, oh, if a foreclosure is sold on the county steps, then a not-for-profit gets the first right of refusal to buy that property, okay? So what happened was, you saw, and this was in the news two, three months ago, a number of out-of-state not-for-profits created, one in Washington, D.C., and a couple, and they came in, they bought these foreclosed rental properties, and then as soon as they bought them, they basically kicked the renters out and flipped them and made money on them, right? And so they said, well, we didn't understand that as an unintended consequence at the state level, but that is what happens. The law is, to really catch all the different examples of what can happen, it's very difficult to write in the ordinance. And so you typically find organizations, whether by design or not, that come in and take advantage of the situation. Now, the city leaders, when they're thinking about this whole non-profits coming and taking the foreclosed, naturally occurring, which is because of the eviction moratorium, do they not care about the landlords or housing providers? Do they see that they, because if you're losing for foreclosure, it means you lost a home. There's another angle there. First off, unfortunately, the people that provide housing to the community in Oakland, California are considered evil, right? They're considered evil because it's assumed that they're raising the rents to, and they're taking advantage of the community. Whereas the city councils are passing very costly ordinances, they're raising taxes all the time. They are actually the ones, and they're preventing the production of housing. So they are actually the ones that are causing the increase in these prices, but they very effectively have blamed it on the housing providers, right? They're not gonna blame it on themselves. So they blamed it on the housing providers. And yeah, so another example of how the eviction moratorium is hurting supply in the community is that there are many community housing providers, mom and pop housing providers, that are basically, they might have a single family house, and they're saying, we're not gonna rent this anymore, right, we're gonna just sell it, and they'll sell it to somebody, but it'll go off the rental market forever. And that is, there's a large number of properties out there where people are, they might have two or three units, somebody's moved out, they're not gonna rent those out because this is not so, part of it's the eviction moratorium, but another part of it is the Just Cause and other rental regulations that basically make it extremely difficult to, if somebody's lease ends, then they may never want to leave. And it's possible that they'll just stay there forever, whereas you have to buy them out, basically, if you wanna sell your property. And Chris, how did you get into this? You started, you were in the technology space, right? You got into- I was in telecommunications, and in the tech side of telecommunications, and I used to live on a plane. I kinda, I was traveling all over the world, and I didn't get to see my, I didn't get to spend enough time with my daughter and my wife, and we lived in Northern California. And so, on the side, a friend of mine encouraged me to invest in a small multi-unit property, and I was a former CPA when I, back 30 years ago, and I sort of figured out how to operationally improve the properties. And I got very into the, I got deep into understanding the ordinances and these rent regulations, and making sure here's how to properly run and manage, and how to properly work with your tenants, right? And so that's how I got into it. I started there, and just kind of been working in building that, and then I just decided to focus all my time in that area. And from what you told us offline, you were pretty hands-on, like you do a lot of things. I 100% manage my properties, meaning I did all the accounting, all the property management, all the maintenance, I do all the maintenance. You do the maintenance, too. Yeah, yeah, and I was fortunate, I started out as an auto mechanic 40 years ago, and so I kind of learned how to do work with my hands and do things. I do have a property manager that helps me now, just because a lot of the paperwork just got so onerous and challenging in the community. Under the rental regulations, I decided to let them do that. But I still do the majority of the maintenance. And it's actually good, because I know all my tenants. I have a relationship with them. We don't have an adversarial relationship, which the community's trying to, they're trying to split this. The city leaders. The city leaders, the tenant activists, they want this adversarial relationship, because it benefits them, right? And so, fortunately, I don't have that with the majority of my tenants, because I am there. If there's a maintenance issue, I try to fix it that day, if possible. It's all about customer service, and maybe that's when I came from the corporate world. Provide great customer service, and you'll have a prosperous business. So, that's what I'm about. So, with all this effort that's happening, how is this going to impact the relationship of landlords and tenants going forward, and housing providers and tenants? Yeah, I think it's, again, it's, I go back to that kind of 80-20 split. There is a sense of, in the community, and it's not only with rental housing, of entitlement, right? And they're kind of, housing is a human right, or some of the other messaging that's given in the community. So, it does cause some challenges with some tenants that believe in that philosophy. And so, it's a matter of, I'm somebody, I kind of have an open personality, and in general, I try to have a conversation and understand the issues. And a lot of times, most of the time, I'm successful in that. But not all housing providers are like me. They don't have an extroverted personality, and they can be afraid of their tenants, or they're afraid to have a discussion. And I think it's, you can be successful if you can have an open discussion. But it can be hard with some tenants, and it can be difficult for some housing providers. And so, then you kind of get this division, right, that that's being kind of fostered in the community. And it just makes it harder and harder and harder to operate in the community. And what's really happening is a lot of, you add up all the rental regulations that keep piling on, you add up the eviction moratorium where people weren't paid, community housing providers are just getting out of the business. They're saying, forget it, I'm gonna sell. And whether they're selling their single-family property or they're selling their other properties, they also generally need, because you don't know if you're gonna get a bad actor tenant or not, right? Even though it may happen 20% of the time, it could happen, you don't know. So, you have to have a lawyer. You're gonna incur legal expenses. And over time, corporates can kind of build a bigger portfolio and they can pay for a lawyer on staff. And that is what City Council is pushing today. They may not know it, but they're pushing all the housing stock into the hands of larger corporate companies. And so, while they will provide housing and they'll provide good service, that's not an issue, but they're not gonna have the personal relationship with their tenants. And they're gonna probably charge more, right? They will raise rents every year, right? Generally, they will raise rents every year when they have the opportunity to do that. Whereas other housing providers may not. They may not because they have a relationship. It's a family relationship. I have such deep personal relationships with many of my tenants. And if they have an issue, if they can't pay rent that month, I'll work that out with them, right? And so, that's what's key in this business. And unfortunately, City Council, they assume that we're just out to take advantage of the community. And we're not. We're actually providing housing to the community. It's a very important aspect to it. And how is this gonna impact the tenants in the long run? Number one, there is gonna be... The eviction moratorium, in my personal opinion, is the largest negative impact to housing in the Oakland community that's happened probably since rent control was implemented. Because it has... Rent control, again, it scares outside investment out. And when I say outside investment, it means building new supply for the community. That's what rent control did. Eviction moratorium, now we know. City Council, at any time, may say, oh, hey, there's a problem. We have to have an eviction moratorium. And so, that's gonna scare people out of the community, meaning they're not gonna develop new supply. If you don't have supply and you still have demand, meaning people are still coming into the community, the Bay Area's got great weather. There's lots of job opportunities. Over time, more people come back to the community. There won't be enough housing and prices are gonna go up. It will lock... It's gonna lock existing people into their apartments. It's gonna be very difficult for them to move somewhere else in the Oakland or Bay Area community. And they'll be pushed out. They'll be pushed out to other communities or out of the state. Is it gonna be harder for people to qualify? Yes. So, one other thing that the eviction moratorium has done is that it's hurt probably the tenants that have more challenges to rent an apartment. Meaning, pre-pandemic and even during the pandemic, if somebody applied and they didn't meet the qualifications, so a certain FICO score or a certain income score, I would sit down with them and understand maybe why their credit store is not as high as it should be or why they had an income issue with this. And many times, take a chance on them. They'll tell you how they're gonna pay rent and how they're gonna meet the terms of the lease. So I would give them that opportunity. And this is how it is with all community housing providers. But now that you have an eviction moratorium and you have tougher and tougher rental regulations, it's a little scarier to give as many of those opportunities because you're taking a chance when you're doing that. And so, yes, people are having to raise their qualification criteria in order to offer housing to the community. So it's going to hurt. All these policies ultimately hurt the renters in the community. It makes it more difficult for them to find housing and will get more expensive. I actually have another, actually, one other thing I wanna mention. In Oakland, California, there was a set of just cause laws just passed this last November. It was proposed by a city council and it was voted on by the public. And one of the criteria in there is you cannot evict A, teachers or anybody that's involved with a school or families with children under 18 during the school year. So the school year is roughly from August 15th to June 15th. It's a sound good policy. Sounds like a great policy. But now if somebody has a lease and they're renting it to a teacher and that lease ends on September of the next year, and maybe that person's going to move in that, or they were maybe expecting the teacher to move out and they were gonna have a family member move in or they were gonna sell it to fund their child's education, the teacher now has just cause right to stay in that house all the way until the next June. And eviction is worded so broadly that that could mean something called a three-day notice of late payment, meaning it's possible that they could actually stretch it out for two years before they can be evicted. So in the beginning, housing providers are gonna kind of hear about that or maybe they're gonna get burnt in a way that somebody's not gonna move out of their house. But over time, people are gonna say, if I have two equal applications and one's a teacher and one is somebody that's providing an application but they have the same income levels and same rent history, they're probably gonna go for the person that's not going to have a just cause right to stay in their home for two years after the lease ends, right? So it's going to impact those people that they're actually trying to help. Exactly. And this is what many of the rent control laws do is it hurts the exact same people they're trying to help. They don't realize it. They won't even listen to housing providers. They don't trust housing providers even though we provide the housing and we understand exactly how to operate. So Chris, how do you keep going despite all of these challenges you guys are facing? What I see is I see the negative impacts that a lot of the, again, the rental, the ordinances and the eviction moratorium have put on the community. And I just feel it's just not right, right? It primarily impacts a lot of people in, black and brown people in East and West Oakland. And I kind of have a passion. I just want to help them, right? And I'm very involved and active in the community from just trying to teach the community and trying to teach housing or the council members how their policies negatively impact the community. And that's kind of, for me, that's kind of fun. That's why I'm staying in it right now. Do you talk to them? Do they talk to you? It depends. As the pandemic ended, council meetings opened to the public, okay? So meeting in person. So we, a number of us got together and we held rallies. And so we kind of, it was more visual of the impact to the community out there. And so it did give us the opportunity to meet and the city council, many of them genuinely wanted to understand the issue and they started to realize, oh, there are impacts to the community. And there have been, there's many people that are being negatively impacted. So they opened up probably only in the last two to three weeks as- Was it after the hunger strike or was it- The hunger strike was at the Alameda County level. But yeah, so actually that helped us to talk with the county, the supervisors at the county, they opened up. So that rally and the hunger strike certainly helped with that. And then as Oakland is considering what they're gonna do with their eviction moratorium, we held a couple rallies to let them know how the community is being negatively impacted. And it did give us the opportunity to speak about some of the issues to the community and to council. So do you encourage other housing providers to join you guys or- Absolutely, this is the biggest thing. We need people to come out, speak at the council meetings and talk about their challenges and talk about which communities of Oakland they're in and how they've been impacted by the eviction moratorium and how they're impacted by these ongoing rental regulations and how they negatively impact the community overall rather than helping to foster a productive and growing housing community. Do you have any other thoughts for our audience? I think it's just, watch what's happening in Oakland because it's probably the most, strongest rental regulations in the country. And I think it's helping to communicate to your communities and other communities that this is how these things can negatively impact and learn about what's going on in Oakland, California. So when these things come to your community, you can help to educate your city councils on the negative impacts. Chris Moore, housing provider in Oakland, it was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you, thanks for inviting me. 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