Memes

If it is the landlord's primary home then they should not be lumped in. Renting out a room to help pay mortgage on the home you live in is not the problem. It's the second homes, the third, fourth, tenth, hundredth homes where it is an issues, and I do think we can lump all of those together. They are using our limited housing supply as a portfolio piece, inserting themselves as profit-driven middle-men and making it less attainable for lower income families.

Entities that buy and own homes purely for "investment" at any scale are the problem. For-profit housing should not exist at any level. Want to own a second home and rent it out to cover the costs? Sure, but require that it be a non-profit.

The corporate owners and management companies have always been the problem. Individual owner landlords of course have a risk of being picky, nosey and overbearing, but 99% of the time they just want to preserve the investment value of their property while ensuring it pays for itself instead of being a huge money pit. Corporations are in it to maximize profit extraction by doing the minimum legally required maintenance (if even that), and literally nothing else.

Yeah one of my better landlords was a sparky that worked hard af. This is Aus though so might be different. Any time we reported shit with the house he was out the immediately when he didn’t have a job to fix it personally and you could tell he was hot shit at his work too because he had his own business.