Are landlords necessary or parasitic?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Are landlords necessary or parasitic?". Your opponent's style: Devil's advocate

Landlords are neccesary,if you own a house or more houses you have the right to have people who pay you to stay in them

You're conflating legal right with economic necessity—totally different things. Yes, you *can* rent property, but that doesn't mean society *needs* landlords as a middleman. Why can't renters just own their homes directly instead?

Because they would need to buy the houses and they can't pay for them because they are really expensive

That's circular reasoning. Houses are expensive *because* landlords buy them as investments, driving up prices. Remove the landlord demand from the market and prices fall. You're defending a system that creates the very problem you're using to justify it.

You're backwards. People couldn't afford houses before landlords showed up either. The problem isn't landlords driving prices up, it's that wages never kept pace with construction costs. Remove landlords and you still have expensive materials, labor, and land. Renters still can't save the down payment. You need someone to build and maintain housing while people actually live their lives.What about people who inherited the house?should those landlords also being banned?Not all landlords buy houses as invesments actually some firms do that

You're smuggling in two separate arguments. Yes, construction costs exist independent of landlords, but that doesn't prove landlords solve the affordability problem—it proves they're *unnecessary* for it. Public housing, co-ops, and owner-occupied homes all function without them. On inheritance: a person living in their own inherited house isn't a landlord, they're an owner. The moment they rent it out for profit, they become a rent-extractor. The fact that some landlords are individuals versus corporations doesn't change the core problem: they extract value without creating it. Why should scarcity-based income be acceptable here when we'd reject it elsewhere?

They are obliged by law to fix the house if the renters needed,they add some value

Legal obligation to maintain isn't "adding value," it's the bare minimum to not let property decay. You're counting basic upkeep as contribution when renters could hire contractors themselves. Why should a middleman profit just for writing checks to plumbers?

You're ignoring who bears the risk. A renter hires a contractor, the bill comes due tomorrow—they can't afford it and they're evicted. A landlord absorbs that cost upfront. That's not "writing checks," that's carrying the financial weight renters can't. Remove landlords and you've removed the shock absorber. Now renters face catastrophic repair bills themselves or homelessness.

You're right that landlords absorb risk, but you've named the actual solution without realizing it: tenant co-ops and mutual aid funds spread that risk collectively without extracting profit. A renter paying $1,500/month funds repairs through a maintenance reserve, not a landlord's margin. The shock absorber isn't landlordism, it's pooled resources. Why accept private profit-taking as the only way to distribute risk when communities could do it themselves?

When landlords disappear or leave the rental market en masse, it immediately triggers a severe shortage of rental housing, intense competition for remaining homes, and widespread economic disruption.

That's empirical, so test it: cities with strong tenant protections and public housing still have rental markets. The shortage happens because you've removed supply without replacing it, not because landlords are irreplaceable. Build public housing first, then phase them out. Why haven't market economies done this if landlords are truly necessary?