Speaking about the broader point about housing collapse hurting homeowners of a single home, I wouldn’t call people who had 50K-100K saved that went towards downpayment rich. There certainly are many poorer people but saving this much requires earning just $1000 extra per month for 5-10 years. That’s $10/hr more. These aren’t the rich people that should be eaten.
I’m just addressing the general point of who gets hurt during a real estate market collapse. I know the article is talking about landlord taxes. Those are going to hurt the right people. In fact I was going to suggest that if you want to hurt rich people more than the working class, you want to tax them and/or pay the working class more, not tank the markets that render vast quantities of working class homeless.