And her rent probably didn't take 100 hours of labor a month.

That does sound like a regulation problem in the capitalist hellacape that is the USA more than anything. I live in The Netherlands and evicting someone here is very difficult. A landlord needs to make his case in front of a judge and everything. There's one reason with which they can evict a tenant with a bit more ease and that's to use the property themselves, but they need to prove why they need it all of a sudden. And even then they need to pay the tenant roundabouts €7000 to help with the move.