The reason why you get better yields from being a landlord or investing in shares than from keeping it in the bank is because you also accept risk. These people accepted the risk, and their reward during normal times is a better yield. By bailing them out (and specifically only the ones who also get income tax)

The risk they accept usually means that they might have to find new tenants or replace stuff. Your tenant won't pay what they agreed to? Now you have to find a new tenant.

But right now we want them to not kick out people who can't pay. We want them to provide free housing to tenants who need it. Those are the landlords we want to bail out. Asking them to just take that as a loss is shitty.

(I assume that the landlords who don't forgive rent don't get to claim this loss on their taxes.)

It seems they also got a reward during the tough times

It’s one thing to make a profit or a loss, it’s another thing when a government forces you to take a loss to subsidize someone else. If there was a risk that you’d be forced by the government to take huge losses then that risk should be priced into the rent — which means future rents will have to be much higher to accommodate the increased risk. Imagine if a grocery store were required to give free food to everyone at the command of the government. Who covers that expense? The shopkeeper? Any shops that managed to survive would have to jack up future prices to recover their loss. The risk of the government taking away your inventory and giving it away uncompensated is unprecedented. You can’t evict and you can’t collect rent because of a government decree — that’s effectively a seizure of property which is illegal without due process. Even eminent domain requires fair compensation to the property owner. If you accept this as acceptable, then what’s to stop the government from taking all of your income and giving it away? Why is your income supposed to be safe from seizure but someone else’s isn’t?

> which means future rents will have to be much higher to accommodate the increased risk

Right! And that, too, is illegal under rent control in many places (NY and California).