Terrible take. I never had a problem with any of my landlords, and I always rented houses. If something went wrong, fridge stopped working, HVAC broke, washing machine stopped draining, etc. the landlord would have someone out that day or the next or have an appliance delivered. My roommates and I didn't need to maintain an emergency budget for these things or be responsible for annual maintenance of everything.

I always had multiple roommates and we split the rent and happily had access to a much nicer home and neighborhood than we had any right to.

One landlord I had lived just one street over, in a similar house, so his family wasn't getting rich by any means. Another was some SE Asian immigrant woman and she was just getting by but the rental house was her retirement plan instead of a 401k.

When I eventually bought my first house at 26, I had a roommate come with me for a couple years until I had my first kid. Technically I was a landlord in that scenario, so does that make me scum too? I mean he was incredibly happy with the situation despite knowing I was turning some modest profit.