I still maintain there's a huge difference between corporate/professional landlords (real estate investment companies like JLL or Cofinimmo, slumlords,...) and regular people who choose to invest an inheritance or saved up wealth (the second one being mostly applicable to Gen X and earlier, of course) to buy a second house and use it as supplemental income/a nest egg/secondary pension fund.
This is a societal/governmental choice, partially. In the UK, something like 70% of people rent. In Belgium, nearly 85% are owners of their own home - and nearly all the rest are owned by private individuals. I own a small apartment in Brussels which I rent out, and which helps me to pay my mortgage. It's a form of "early inheritance" my parents used to pass along part of their wealth to me and my brother (avoiding my sister getting a part) when they sold our family home.
Is it perfectly fair? Maybe not - in a complete socialist society there's no such thing, I guess. But it also doesn't make me a leech who's profiting off the back of poor hardworking lower class people. being a landlord is not in it self by definition Evil or Bad. Being a greedy fuck who abuses the power he holds over others to milk them dry while letting them live in squalor is.
