The combination of the two is catastrophic decline in your property value.Your Mitigation Plan is to only buy in areas where rents are growing, new jobs are coming to town and there's a thriving well-diversified economy.

Even though I never make claims (barring major events like fires, also high on my list) or something causing catastrophic damage, neighbors around me making claims is still causing my insurance to skyrocket and even for insurance to not renew policies which has happened several times leaving me scrambling to find insurance.

I only insure for catastrophes like cancer not colds and flu meaning I keep a $5000 deductible.

And at the local level, local people could meet the needy face-to-face and determine who is truly in need, who just needs temporary help, who needs catastrophic help, etc.

Rents might level off but unless there's some catastrophic event, people aren't going to be leaving so rents that pay the mortgage today will continue to pay. 

I've known lots of landlords who just rent in their names, and they've never had anything catastrophic happen to them.  

Strong markets very rarely see real declines in rental rates, and even when they do, a 10% decrease is close to the highest you'll see, barring catastrophe.

Which also meant that if catastrophe had happened and taken out all four buildings, that would have been four (or eight) deductibles to cover also.My offer wasn't accepted anyway and I wasn't going any higher because of the substantial insurance cost. 

In most cases this is a catastrophic financial situation. 

The numbers make sense even with a slump in rent prices and barring a catastrophic occurrence like no college classes in the Fall, we think demand for a well-priced rental isn't going to dip enough in our target market.