The difference being that you can choose to take out a loan and buy a house, but you can't really choose not to pay rent (unless you want to be homeless of course, but that's not an option I would recommend to anyone)
>Gao discovered that one of his former tenants had given her keys to a friend who had moved in without permission. Gao has never met the squatter now living in his house and is afraid to contact this person out of fear that he'll be sued for harassment.
So it's not that the tenants were forced to stop paying rent, someone who doesn't even have a rental agreement has simply moved in, so the landlord would have every right to get them evicted, but chooses not to for... reasons?!