Auto-demolition allows for a trickle of empty plots over time because some players will leave the game for whatever reason. Given the current housing situation, it's wasteful to leave those abandoned houses empty. And with the new lottery system, I imagine it feels better for homeless players to at least be able to bid on a plot every cycle (or as frequently as possible), even if there's stiff competition, rather than never even have the opportunity to bid because some abandoned plots are still taken.

The original suspension of auto-demolition made sense: it was difficult to even log into the servers. That wasn't the player's fault, it was SE's. (Sure, we can have the discussion about their realistic ability to weather a spike in traffic, considering pandemic-related supply chain issues, but even then, SE's response was primarily reactive rather than proactive.)

The extension of the suspension due to the "current world situation" was extremely gracious on SE's part. They recognized that reinstating auto-demolition at the same time as a portion of their playerbase would be unable to react would be a PR misstep. So they extended it. (And I think that was the right choice!)

But what I'm curious about is this: had the auto-demolish already been reinstated pre-war, would SE really have paused it again? I honestly don't think so. (And I think that would be a dangerous precedent to set, primarily because war and other world events are not SE's fault in the same way the bungling of the Endwalker release was.)

So I'm very sympathetic to those individuals who want to continue their subscriptions but cannot through no fault of their own, but that goes for so many more people than just those affected by the war. And in the meantime, thousands of active players are denied the ability to interact with a core (according to ads) game system.

(And yes, of course, the ideal answer is for SE to fix housing point blank period. But we see how that's going XD)