Allow me to start out with a little preamble before getting into my idea. Also, my apologies if someone's already thought of this before, I haven't had the time to read everyone's thoughts on this.
THE PREAMBLE:
Clearly community and benevolence are big things for Glitchen. Streets (for houses) were created in such a way that having neighbors matters, but if we keep along our current trend that means that soon there might be only a single active player per street. This isn't the game's fault, or our fault, it's just how people work.
I'd personally be okay to 'boot' someone from a house that hasn't played in a set period of time (a month? three months?). They don't have to play for long, just log into the game for 1 second and 'poof' the 'counter' resets. I am wholly against anything that punishes how a person is required to play (eg: if you don't pet this many piggies, or donate this much stuff, you aren't playing 'enough' to own a house).
THE BIG IDEA:
When someone is forced out of their house due to lack of playing, I don't think people should lose stuff (minus, perhaps, animals and trees, because they'd likely be dead at that point anyways - but even this is debatable). Anything in the house / storage cabinate should be transfered to a [new to Glitch] Storage Unit.
A Storage Unit would be a place that is only accessible by you, would have a full size storage cabinate, and the ability to store items on the ground. It'd be very small, have no trees, no crop plots, and no animals allowed (they'd instantly get 'sad').
When you get pulled from your house (with appropriate warnings ahead of time via email and in-game, etc) everything you owned would go to your Storage Unit. If you already owned one, the sale value of your house (80%) would transfer back to you. If you didn't already own a unit, one would be purchased in your name (using funds out of your house's sale). I'm presuming since it's such a restricted space / single player only it'd cost no more than 500 currants (but would require papers, just like owning a house).
This solves the freak-out people might have with 'losing everything' if their house was taken away, and creates a nice middle-ground for finding more Glitchen ways to deal with the problem of wanting to have active neighbors yet not wanting to 'harm' others by forcing them to forclose and lose their fortunes (without implementing things like rent).