Because it has to be effective. A rent strike simply delays the inevitable eviction, and not going to work means the inevitable firing. And so it's a race to the bottom on an already ty situation.
The PPP loans were supposed to be an incentive for companies to keep payroll and avoid those firings, even if employees didn't want to go back to work (but didn't quit). Should also tentatively cover the case of people not losing salary and thus avoiding being behind on their rents.
However, this has a number of fatal flaws:
1) Companies can downsize greatly before applying for the loan (or even after, there's a grace period from the loan approval until you have to present your head count sheet). This is something logical to do, since in most cases it would be crazy to keep producing at the same levels pre-pandemic, as the economy will inevitably shrink. Plus there's obviously no penalty if you later on want to expand again.
2) Loans are 2 or 5 years maturity, 1% interest rate, no fees, 6 month deferred payment, no collateral or personal guarantees required. They also cover Business Mortgage interest payment AND Business Rent/Lease payments as part of the forgiveness deal. I mean they're so egregiously good, that you almost, ALMOST, want to get one of these, go to Vegas, and throw it into the roulette. You win, you get to keep anything above the loan amount + 1%, PLUS you still have a solid shot at forgiveness. You lose, you declare bankruptcy, and move on (I'm exaggerating here, but if you don't think some of these companies are not going to do financial gambles with that money, you've not been paying attention).
3) On the point above, you're lending to companies, not persons (you have to be a special kind of stupid not to create an LLC for this). Since you don't need collateral or guarantees, good luck collecting if any of these companies go under (it'll be interesting to keep an eye on that).
4) Loans have all sort of perks, like if you fired somebody and then tried to hire somebody else, as long as you "made a good-faith, written offer to rehire workers that was declined", you're still A-OK.
5) Forgiveness applies even if you reduced your payroll up to 40% during the loan term (in which case the forgiven amount is the lower amount, and you pay the difference).
6) The biggest flaw is that this does nothing to for the unemployed, and due to 1), you're going to get a ton of unemployed.
7) It basically puts a golden-vest on the companies, hopes that the economy will somehow rebound, and companies will be flush with cash to re-hire. It's not a bad plan, but you would think you want more certainty about the rebound timing before handing out all that cash.
Now that the unemployment insurance bonus is gone, this puts a lot of pressure on the unemployed, and if the economy really doesn't rebound, you're looking at even tier dead-end wage slaves just to get by.
We talked about alternatives, like a temporary UBI, etc. Obviously, now that companies are largely off the hook, there's much less urgency for that.
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