Look, I agree fully with what you said here, except for one thing: that "signed agreement to pay a given price". Sorry, but in reality that all just flew right out the window because of this bullshit pandemic. Those agreements are perfectly sensible in normal times, when markets need and can support long term contracts for stability. It also happens that landlords have been horribly spoiled into assuming they never need to take a price cut, and the only change they will ever have to make is an annual increase in their own favor. Well too fucking bad, that all just failed, and the rest of us taxpayers shouldn't have to pay to enforce a contract that is no longer aligned with a brand new market reality.
Ultimately the reality is that rental prices are driven by real estate prices, and those are driven by an investment market. The people behind that investment market (including banks) happen to be the only people with any money any more (indeed they're fucking swimming it more than ever before in all of history), and it is finally time they are going to have to take a bloody hair cut, because their own fucking puppets in government just destroyed the markets, and now We The Peons can't keep playing the game they set up to enrich themselves on our dime, paying hugely inflated rent so they can keep getting richer.
An example starting point: we could say "landlords can't evict if the tenant is willing to pay 50% rent". In turn, we could also say that if the landlord can't afford to keep up the mortgage payments, that the bank or other investors can't repossess the property if the landlord pays 50% on the mortgage. And the investors at the top can suck it up, for the first time in decades.
Look, I agree fully with what you said here, except for one thing: that "signed agreement to pay a given price". Sorry, but in reality that all just flew right out the window because of this bullshit pandemic. Those agreements are perfectly sensible in normal times, when markets need and can support long term contracts for stability. It also happens that landlords have been horribly spoiled into assuming they never need to take a price cut, and the only change they will ever have to make is an annual increase in their own favor. Well too fucking bad, that all just failed, and the rest of us taxpayers shouldn't have to pay to enforce a contract that is no longer aligned with a brand new market reality.
Ultimately the reality is that rental prices are driven by real estate prices, and those are driven by an investment market. The people behind that investment market (including banks) happen to be the only people with any money any more (indeed they're fucking swimming it more than ever before in all of history), and it is finally time they are going to have to take a bloody hair cut, because their own fucking puppets in government just destroyed the markets, and now We The Peons can't keep playing the game they set up to enrich themselves on our dime, paying hugely inflated rent so they can keep getting richer.
An example starting point: we could say "landlords can't evict if the tenant is willing to pay 50% rent". In turn, we could also say that if the landlord can't afford to keep up the mortgage payments, that the bank or other investors can't repossess the property if the landlord pays 50% on the mortgage. And the investors at the top can suck it up, for the first time in decades.