Not really. The right to maintain a real estate investment scheme is worlds apart from the right to have what you need to survive and function in society. You should have one house that is yours, full of stuff that is yours, with a car that is yours in the garage. I don't think you should be able to buy up a bunch of houses and make other people pay a premium for the privilege of paying your mortgage for you.

It's true that most states fail to house all their people. Most developed countries do it better than the U.S., and a big reason for that is because they're smart enough to not leave so much of the country's housing up to any ding-a-ling with a little cash to throw around.

Of course not, the existing system provides extensive legal recourse. The state already protects and enshrines your right to buy up an essential resource and rent it out at a profit. I think the state will help you out just fine under the current system, and am not particularly concerned with expanding the extensive set of legal rights you already have as a landlord. Cry me a river, in other words, I think you're going to be just fine.

But we're talking about ideals here. You fantasize about a world where you can have someone live in your little investment scheme until they run out of money, then you can get them thrown in jail.

I would prefer a world where you have a nice, clean, safe house to live in, and so does your "friend's" former tenant. You own your home, and your former tenant owns his. If your former tenant found a way to live a little closer to that world than to your nightmare fantasy, I have only warm thoughts and feelings for him, and only laughter for you.

If we're talking about who's taking advantage of who, one of the people in this transaction was trying to profit off of the other person's need to not freeze to death, and the other person was the tenant. If the tenant doesn't have the right to live freely in a safe, warm home regardless of ability to pay, then all bets are off and the landlord is investing in a free market. Sometimes, when you invest in a free market, you lose. That's not the taxpayer's problem, that's your problem.

If we're not going to have enough of a social safety net to keep people out of the gutter, then I don't think there should be a social safety net that specifically protects people who make stupid investment decisions and have to deal with the consequences of their actions.

Looks like somebody made a bad investment. If you don't want to take on risk, don't invest in real estate. Your friend could have just invested in index funds and would have been doing fine. If it's not the state's job to make sure that there are safe and affordable places for everyone to live, it is most definitely also not the state's job to make sure that every ding-a-ling that tries to become a real estate investor turns a profit.