You can be damn sure there were plenty of scofflaws who simply refused to pay rent even though they were gainfully employed ... and bought all kinds of other crap with their money instead.
The mass evictions never happened. I am a landlord of aprtment duplexes and all my renters paid each month. I belong to a local landlord group on facebook and only a handful of people stopped paying rent.
The problem was over exagerated. AOC and her types made it out to be super huge problem. It wasn’t.