There shouldn't be a housing market, markets are inefficient, and you shouldn't create winners and losers around basic human needs.
Your problem is you are viewing this as some sort of moral argument. I am not claiming landlords are sinners, Im saying that their class existing is harmful and land should not be commodified as it currently is.
Small landlords of the sort that you described are indeed just making long-term investments that are likely to yield a decent return or become a source of stability as an appreciating asset. It’s the kind of investment that we should want lots of people to be able to take advantage of.
Except by its very nature it is extractive. The renter is always getting fucked over in the situation.
Except life expectancy, women's rights which still haven't been replicated in the west, nutrition, the eradication of homelessness(not the homeless like the US wants to do) political agency for the proletariat, the list goes on.
And lgbt rights in Cuba, east Germany before its collapse, and increasingly in countries like Vietnam and China.
Housing is only constructed because there are landlords.
Bwahahahaha
Oh wait, youre serious, let me laugh even harder
Most people don't understand calculus either, doesn't mean it isnt necessary for certain applications.
And marxist analysis is generally more useful to the average person.
No, most landlords just buy housing. Construction is usually a seperate business.
I'm not casting blame, I am talking structurally. As a class they do this behavior. Small landlords also contribute to the commodification of housing.
On the subject of Marxism, if people stopped getting into debt a lot less money would be flowing to the top. Banks would have fewer profits and their power would shrink.
See, this is an example of getting so close and missing analysis that you could have just read.
There are countless more efficient ways that are just less efficient at generating income for the ownership class. Do I need to run over all the strategies from pre-fuedalism to the varieties of modern public housing?