There is more to it than that. Funding people to get through these rough times is not pretending at all. Really, it is an investment. These people have agenc

There is more to it than that. Funding people to get through these rough times is not pretending at all. Really, it is an investment. These people have agency they would not have otherwise and that counts for a lot! Maybe they need to build a skill. Or, they can get another job that pays well enough to keep them on a similar life path with similar expectations. In the case of families, a forced move, or transition to being homeless has a huge impact on kids amd their development. Development which will have a significant impact on their politics. "True demamd" While I get what you mean here, it is also important to recognize a majority of the labor force at this point is underpaid. That same investment has educated people about markets and what they mean for labor better than most anything else has. In many cases, getting another job is increasingly likely to result in under compensation. Some info out there pegs this at somewhere in the 10's of trillions over the last few decades, since late 70's. Landlords are increasingly aware of what remote work means. If they are in an undesirable area, yeah rent is likely to have to go down, but given the low wage scenario out there, they could make the case it happens that way more than it should. Some people are saving that money. Others may catch up on debts and such. One member of my family basically arranged to be laid off so they can prep their home for sale and go mobile, homeless by choice with enough in their savings to live reasonably for a couple decades taking work where they can get it. I think this has been great for the lower wage job market. People are balking, asking questions and often figuring out they can ask them in large numbers too. A primary one being why they need to continue working for a wage that pays less than it costs them to exist and show up for work. Large employers have huge numbers of people on assistance while putting billions in profit in the bank. They can still put most of those billions in the bank and pay people enough to make it and should. Why should we be subsidizing labor like that? Given new and better answers, more equitable from a labor point of view, landlords evaluating "true demand" may well realize they may not have to reduce rent as much as support labor getting paid enough to make it more than happens now. And that is just for starters. We have all these things intertwined and need to think through higher order effects more than is happening today.