are landlords cringe?

I’ve noticed that the contempt for landlords (example in polish) has recently reached a new level - landlord being are equated with social parasites, who are going to cause an overpopulation crisis in literal hell. Surely, behind such brutal rhetoric stands some merit?

Landlords bad!1!1!

Landlords are said not to do any work - they just siphon others’ efforts. If you and your landlord earn a similar wage and you’re both saving for a new flat, it’s going to be your landlord that can buy it first, although they already have a place of their own. Albeit, a landlord makes sure your apartment is a decent place to live (e.g they call in a plumber once in a while) it doesn’t lessens their parasitism, because then they become a redundant middleman (it’s not rocket science to call a plumber). Some might claim that becoming a landlord actually requires much effort - you must take risk, familiarize yourself with the appropriate laws, go around searching for a property etc. but why someone should bother with it all? Can’t we organize into housing cooperatives or establish a government monopoly on rentiership and thus socialize the trouble?

Landlords bad?

Imagine you’re moving into city of Ekslandia - let’s say you’ve landed a job opportunity there. You’re pretty sure that you won’t stay in Ekslandia for more than N years. Sadly, all of the established housing cooperatives are already full (they provide high quality housing, so nobody want to leave) and the ongoing initiatives either will take more than N years to provide you with a quarter (establishing an organization is not a timely process) or are not welcoming of total strangers that hardly have a job in the city housing coops are allowed to select who’s to live with them). You try applying for social housing, but it turns out that it favors people with turbulent past. Running out of options (and since people on the internet told you that all landlords do is exploit), you want to take out a loan and buy an apartment. You meet up with your financial adviser and he tells you that the loan over the N years that you plan to stay in the city will cost you X, however he also mentions that due to the growth of available housing alternatives, the typical rent has fallen drastically and it wouldn’t be hard to find a similar apartment that over the next N years will only cost you (X - 1). Since everyone can subtract, you quickly figure out that by renting you could actually save one unit of value… Since when does being exploited saves you money?

Landlord good???

Although the above story lays down a rather specific scenario (all ‘better’ options are unavailable, renting is cheaper etc.) and thus is not very convincing, it’s still a scenario that seems to presume most of the skeptics’ propositions, while allowing a landlord to contribute to a society. Basically, what a landlord does is allowing the tenant not to buy an apartment; if we were to let go of some skeptics’ tenets, e.g that housing coops are always more economically efficient, we could ask whether the landlord doesn’t produce value by elevating the tenant from the chore of attending coop’s board meetings? Surly, if someone is attending a board meeting they are not, for example, spending time with their family. Summarizing, we cannot conclude whether landlords are cringe and useless ex offico - when a landlord grants you affordable accommodation they are not cringe otherwise they probably are.