To play Devil's Advocate, the people would only still live there without risk of inescapable debt if they had the qualifications to obtain a loan and pay down payment, as well as means to continue making payments until the property sells again or is paid off. Getting evicted by a landlord sucks but it's still way better than owing the bank money because they can and will come after you for it.

On the flip side, though, you can still get equity from paying a mortgage, so it's possible to sell the property and if it sells fast enough you could pay off the loan without excess interest during hard times.

Buying property comes with risks that renting properties do not have.

How can you be so heartless to someone that is diversifying their income stream?

Some of them might've not been able to (or wanted to) pay for the home ownership. But if this assumes someone not making profit was renting it out then yeah