Also, I did have landlords who would subtract from my rent the cost of hiring a repairman if I did the work myself. It was worth it to them to not hassle with flakey contractors

This isn't quite what I meant though; the fact remains that willingness to do more things yourself will not by itself get you housing, you still have to pay. As I said, I'm not disputing that part of the cost of rent is for services a landlord provides, or disputing that these have value. Rather I am saying that there is a more substantial baseline component to the cost that has nothing to do with these services and has everything to do with control of property, and because of this the statement in the OP comic is broadly accurate.