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all landlords essentially being a pox on society
Yeah I don't believe that, sorry for jumping on you!
I find there's usually a lack of distinction between the actual job part of being a landlord (managing and renovating the building), which is totally fine, and the ultimately feudal nature baked into the landlord-tenant relationship as a result of housing being a speculative financial asset.
I don't see why we can't deal with them separately, hence housing co-ops being a good option for management, or allowing small increases in rent proportional to the actual costs associated with running a building.
I had 6, and all were pleasant enough people, but 3 of them evicted us with one month notice because they were 'selling up'. In all honesty, I think that's what they thought at the time, but only one month later, the places were up on rightmove for rent at a higher price. Meanwhile we had to shell out an extra few hundred quid each time, plus moving costs and all the stress that goes with it.
That's great, but at some point you have to ask whether this is a good way to structure society, not just relying on stories of one-off situations where lucky individuals got a deal. It probably wouldn't be difficult to do a carve out for these specific scenarios anyway.
Very few people actually want to rent, and this is borne out by many many surveys.
Of course it isn't, and a best-case scenario is that this situation will take decades to fix. The slack can be taken up by many more people than just councils too, and even then, their funding models are changing to allow investment in social housing.