>The economic stress of being a landlord, and the bank potentially repossessing your extra houses you don't even live in, doesn't compare to stress of BEING HOMELESS.
That's not true as a universal. Tenants have flexibility of moving to another locations, moving in with friends or family, or making alternate arrangements. On the other hand, foreclosure and repossession would mean the erasure of a family's life savings.
So yes, it does compare, and in many cases it is worse.
By the way, chronic homelessness is not an economic problem. It is equal parts mental illness/drug addiction and polices pushed by activists to prevent providing institutional care to those individuals. Economic homelessness, on the other hand, though it is terrible and happens, it is a transitional state and existing government welfare programs mitigate.
>If you were a landlord and couldn't save enough in the 12 years between 2008 and 2020 ...
This is obscene statement. You have no qualms creating hypothetical fiction in order to extend irrational levels of empathy towards your fictional situations, but you have zero left towards a real group who could be really struggling. And no, landlords are not your Dickensian style villains. They could be working class people who saved their entire lives to purchase another property, or they may be renting out their own house ... and you look at them with disdain. Ugly, through and through.
Foreclosure takes a long time during which you could sell the house and extract any gains in equity made during years of fast growth and use this to support your family and keep your home where your family lives.
In a bad scenario you keep most of your wealth and the home you live in.
Your bad scenario is still literally better than half the nations good scenario.
That's not true as a universal. Tenants have flexibility of moving to another locations, moving in with friends or family, or making alternate arrangements. On the other hand, foreclosure and repossession would mean the erasure of a family's life savings.
So yes, it does compare, and in many cases it is worse.
By the way, chronic homelessness is not an economic problem. It is equal parts mental illness/drug addiction and polices pushed by activists to prevent providing institutional care to those individuals. Economic homelessness, on the other hand, though it is terrible and happens, it is a transitional state and existing government welfare programs mitigate.
>If you were a landlord and couldn't save enough in the 12 years between 2008 and 2020 ...
This is obscene statement. You have no qualms creating hypothetical fiction in order to extend irrational levels of empathy towards your fictional situations, but you have zero left towards a real group who could be really struggling. And no, landlords are not your Dickensian style villains. They could be working class people who saved their entire lives to purchase another property, or they may be renting out their own house ... and you look at them with disdain. Ugly, through and through.