Not to rain on anybody's populist parade here, but as a landlord, I'd like to offer a slightly different perspective:

I own an appartment that I rent. Assuming my tenant is honest, takes care of the property and everything goes well, after I've paid taxes and condominium expenses, there isn't a terribly huge profit left.

The law prevents me from raising the rent beyond the rate of inflation. I'm not greedy, but even if I don't want to raise my nice tenant's rent for a given year, I have to because I won't be able to catch up later, with them or with another tenant. I literally must raise the rent every year because otherwise I won't be able to realign the rent to normal levels in the future. The pro-tenant laws make me do this, and - I shit you not - every year I apologize to my tenant (who's actually a nice lady, this one) because I have no choice.

That's when everything goes well with the tenant. When it doesn't and the tenant refuses to pay, or trashes the property, I can't throw him out. I've had one tenant who couldn't pay his heating bill make a campfire in the middle of the fucking living room with the floorboards he ripped out. Because why not! It's not his property.

He knew all the tricks in the book to avoid being kicked out too. It took me 3 years and an expensive attorney to get rid of him, and then I paid tens of thousands of euros to have the place renovated, because the guy left it looking like a warzone. I lost a truckload of money.

When I told the agency that manages the place not to put it on the market again and to leave it empty - because it's plain cheaper not to collect rent than to risk another sumbitch who's gonna cost me the equivalent of a car to make the place livable again, not to mention the headaches - the agency told me it's illegal and it could be forcibly seized by the French state (the appartment is in France) to house homeless people in the winter. W... Wait.... WHAT???

So I put a tenant in - and luckily for me, for once this one is decent - just to avoid having hobos camping in my appartment.

So you know what? I'm all for social justice and all. But landlord bashing gets fucking tiring too. Tenants aren't the only ones who should have rights.

Now go ahead, mod me down for being a capitalist pigdog. Or better: buy my appartment from me, because I'm fucking tired of dealing with bad tenants and it's up for sale. Just don't buy it to rent it unless you like pain and injustice... Fair warning.