I'm all for providing a social safety net in exactly the way the US doesn't. Housing (aka shelter) is a key part of that but the way the US does this is completely backwards.
The government saying you can't evict someone is basically telling people they don't have to pay rent anymore regardless of need. Rent control is the same way: you can't raise the rent regardless of need. So these programs don't really help people in need: they help market incumbents.
This is the government foisting welfare onto the private sector rather than doing it properly.
If the government didn't want people evicted due to pandemic circumstances, what they should do is assess this on a case-by-case basis and pay the rent for people in genuine need.
The Internet is full of stories of people who just stopped paying rent because they didn't have to anymore as well as taking government checks intended for the landlord and just cashing them, which is a whole other issue.
But some people justify this because, you know, "f*ck landlords", which always struck me as incredibly backward: the only reason there exist apartments and houses to rent is because someone has provided the capital to build them and rent them to you.
Now you can argue maybe the government should do that. I can respect that.
But no rentals at all? So the only way to have somewhere to live is to buy a house? Really? How is that practical and not a recipe for massive homelessness?
As an aside, we do need to do something about hedge funds running around and buying up all the property, only building ultra-luxury property and the ultra-wealthy just parking money in real estate but none of those issues invalidates the need for a rental market to exist.