This story has three aspects, at least as I see it:
1. How much his church is paying him as a housing allowance.
2. He is evicting tenants who don’t pay their rent.
3. His building received $15 million in taxpayer funding.
He’s certainly not obligated to allow people to live there rent free, but when people see those three things and lump them together as a single issue, well, it has bad optics.
It looks like he could give all these people free rent out of his housing allowance. However, that would just create a building full of freeloaders. Sadly, thanks to human nature it’s more complicated than that.
I agree, the issue is optics.
It is common for churches to provide a pastoral housing allowance, or even have a manse for the pastor/family, as part of the compensation; it helps for tax purposes, and is more convenient in denominations, like the Methodists, that move their pastors around every four years or so.
It would be better for him to stay out of the landlord business and stick to the Savior and Lord business, but apostasy is like a squid with many arms, full of black ink.