I fully get the issues with landlords in terms of coasting off of other people's labor and in general being parasitic. My question is, the resistance I get when I say that someone shouldn't profit off of another person's need for housing is that they bring up grocery stores/ restaurants profiting off of a person's need for food. And I don't really know how to address or answer that. Just wondering if someone can close the loop for me!
You can argue that in principle it's also bad for grocery stores to profit off a basic human need, but in practice rent is a much more pressing problem.
Even before the pandemic, 38% of renters faced a rent burden (paying more than 30% of pretax income on rent. 17% of all renters were paying more than 50% of their gross income. This is, of course, worse for black and elderly people.
These figures were trending up pre-pandemic, and there's no indication that they've gotten any better.
So even by the standards of technocrat lanyard types, rent burden is a huge problem.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2018/04/american-families-face-a-growing-rent-burden
They might counter the food security js also a problem for many people, and that is correct. However, you can point out that rent burden almost certainly contributes to food security issues because rent is bigger proportion of household budgets, and much less elastic an expense than food.