I suppose the implied question is: who's going to rent to students if the landlords' investments get penalized for them not living there themselves. There's presumably too many students in these cities for all of them to find some family who have a spare room to rent.
Even if this action were to have unintended consequences, the question was "do they want to". No, they don't, obviously, not any more that the people who gave "go" to STS-51L wanted to kill seven astronauts. What they want to do is to get rid of predatory investors.
There are some very hard limits to taking students in too. You don't want to be a student after the covid induced decline in demand is over. Especially not if you are not from here. The regulation exempt SSH will put you in a room with another student or two and charge you 800 or so.
