Rent is falling across the country...Do you believe unemployment skyrocketing to somewhere between 20-40 million people across the Country preceding the rent price crash is coincidence? Do you have an alternative hypothesis why rent across the Country is dropping? If its not a drop in demand...that would suggest the entire Country increased its housing supply at the same time.
Perhaps a good percentage of millennials moved back in with parents? Perhaps because lots of people are buying instead of continuing to rent because interest rates are so low? Massive amounts of people dying seems like quite the claim indeed.