ID: A Sophie Labelle 4 panel comic featuring Stephie in different poses, saying:
Landlords do not provide housing.
They buy and Hold more space than they need for themselves.
Then, they create a false scarcity and profit off of it.
What they’re doing is literally the opposite of providing housing.
There is a legitimate service being provided there. It just shouldn’t be “lords” who provide it.
The problem is that the “lord” is earning tens of thousands of dollars per year for essentially no work. This makes it essentially similar to how a “lord” worked in a Feudalist system. This isn’t even capitalism where someone owns capital and uses that capital to generate profit. This is just demanding a payment for being in a place.
Since being a landlord requires essentially no work, landlords can accumulate wealth, buy more property, get even more income, buy more property, etc. More wealth / property means more political power. The main thing that political power will be used for is to gain and retain more wealth, which is equivalent to more power.
Imagine how different would be if nobody could ever rent out more than one property, especially combined with a vacant units tax. You’d still have “landlords” but they would be much less lord-like.