While I do think it's good to keep people active (given the lack of land mass on NL); having them grind some sort of repetitive "kill this" type thing solely to keep the house seems like the wrong thing to do. Personally I think requiring them to just open their house door once every couple of weeks should suffice (my house would have still fallen).
I think the way they have made housing in NL, tells me that they kind of expect NL to be THE shard you play (over Prod shards)....which I was hoping they wouldn't do, but that's the way it seems. Perfect example is for the last ToT event arc (Prod) where they had so many great items; every available minute I had went towards getting drops for my home shard because at the end of the day NL is temporary. In that time span, my house fell because I didn't feel like spending one full night playing NL instead of Prod. I'm indifferent about it, but at the same time my feeling is that people cannot be casual NL players (if they want a house) because there is a time/attention requirement in some capacity.
Long story short, the one thing I was hoping was that NL would NOT become a detriment to Prod shards (for Dev work OR Population), but given the latest NL (only) Pub and the time requirement to keep a house; that is seemingly exactly what has happened. To be clear, this isn't meant to be a "sky is falling" post. It's more so about letting players with limited know that eventually you will need to pick NL or Prod when you are able to play. Said in another way, trying to play both NL & Prod appears to have a direct impact on your legacy (in NL).