Are you suggesting the government steal their property?
The rent is set by the market — if I charged a million bucks a month (it’s a one bed flat) it would be empty.
No matter what my costs are, the number chosen by my agent has to be both “as high as possible” and “no higher”.
I do know the government can mess up and if you Google “rent controls” the standard downsides there are real problems if the government goes too far — but there is room to improve the current unreasonable (in my favour) mess.
The market dictates what I can charge.
And if I have good tenants I’d rather keep them than immediately try to recover costs.
Where people may get confused is in ignoring the land appreciation assumptions built into a speculative investment. They don't always recognize that a capital-rich investor might be perfectly happy to buy a property and sit on it for decades without thinking of it as a revenue source. They can only imagine a more leveraged landlord where the property is purchased with a minimal down payment, the rents have to cover all mortgage, tax, and other operating bills, and the landlord may only have a limited amount of emergency capital.
If he thinks a property will appreciate and make money, he will absolutely buy it and let it just sit on his books for a decade while the RE value increases and he waits for an opportune time to develop or rehab it.
Feel free to come up with constructive solutions though.