to buy with excess capital they no longer have.

That's not true because housing is not the only form of wealth.

I could profitably buy a plot of land and use it to store pig feces which happens in North Carolina.

And did I say I approve of that? No. That's why it is a whataboutism fallacy. The topic is housing. Pointing out other horrible ways to use land doesn't change the fact that the current housing situation is bullshit.

They aren’t selling something the person could otherwise afford or even want to buy.

More people could afford to own their house if not for landlords hoarding the supply.

I know contractors that built houses and eventually built one and rented it out for additional income.

Those cases are rare.

https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/landlord-statistics

You’ve never had to clean up a house destroyed by drug addicts. Believe me they can do a ton of damage. There’s plenty of risk. No one in this thread understands that though.

This is again a rare case.

I wonder if the macroeconomic factors could play into that? You know? Stagnating wages, a falling dollar, endless wars, cronyism, endless immigration, enriching Blackrock during the 2008 bank crisis so that it can single handedly buy more single-family homes than any other entity in American history. Nope it’s Jim from work that rents a condo.

It's all of the above. Landlords are a part of the problem, and I never once said they are the sole problem.