Or, ya know, accept that people need a place to stay and recognize that the pandemic was a global disaster that many places were unable to handle, and kicking people out now might be a bigger second order problem.
Landlords, even if, as a business, they don't have an 18 month cash buffer, have equity. If a landlord is hard-up they can attempt to refinance, or go bust and sell their assets (the property) to another more successful (perhaps less levered up) landlord. Rental yields are something like 3-5%, so 18 months of lost income is only an additional 5-8% LTV.
The state should have decreed that anyone who can show hardship (tenant or landlord) be granted interest-free payment holidays for the duration, and made it illegal for leveraged landlords not to pass these on.
They shouldn't, but the fifth and fourteenth amendments exist and retroactively voiding the debt (including forced settlement at a reduced state-judged-as-fair rate looks a lot like either a taking or a deprivation of property without substantive due process, so it is, at best, a magnet for extended and uncertain litigation if anyone isn’t happy with it, and someone won't be; full-value settlement is the fastest way to resolve the adverse impacts of the crisis on renters and landlords, preventing a wave of evictions and/or a wave of ruin for innocent landlords. Is it perfectly just? No. But its almost certainly the resolution that deals with the immediate problem in a way which has the least risk of being derailed by litigation.
Also, the state already entered the game when evictions were suspended. If the choice from your lender as a landlord is bankruptcy or having your mortgage term extended by 18 months, with an 18 month interest-free payment holiday now, if you have hard-up tenants, what would you choose?
(1) Landlords arr often ibdividuals, and (2) in any case, no, they apply to legal persons, generally.
> Also, the state already entered the game when evictions were suspended
There's a reason for different tolerance for litigation risk in those two actions, but in any case by providing essentially full-value compensation for the losses due to the earlier action, this action is not only on firmer ground viewed individually, but also greatly mitigates remaining litigation risk from the earlier action.