So while I generally agree with your sentiment, there are some obvious ways that sometime could be an ethical landlord.

What if you have a house that's too big, so you convert a floor into an apartment? You're adding to the number of housing units available. Should you be forced to sell a portion of your house/building to whoever wants to live there? Or should you be able to rent it out to someone at a reasonable rate? Do we want rules that discourage people from potentially adding units to the market?

I feel like the "all landlords are evil" narrative is way too simplistic, and that simplistic view turns off people who would otherwise support reasonable limits on landlords and housing ownership. Like, it's obvious that we need limits and taxes on people who own multiple properties, and it's obvious that there are companies that exploit renters and drive up prices, but it's all more complicated than just "landlords evil lol".

Your assuming everyone wants to own property over renting.

House and property ownership has a lot of responsibility and expenses involved. Your water heater breaks well there is $1000+ your roof needs replacing there is 30K. All of that goes away when you rent as it isn't your responsibility.

If you own property it can be harder and more risky to relocate. I know a few people that bought in 2007 and then were stuck as they couldn't afford to move because they were upsidedown on their house.

Not saying renting is all sunshine and roses. I personally would rather own then rent but home ownership isn't for everyone.

But I do think it is a major problem when you have a few companies buying up all property so no one else can afford it. But I don't think being a Landlord is inherently evil.

Like in a housing shortage you’re hoarding property and profiting off it.

Housing shortages are caused by bad government policy: namely, low-density zoning. Direct your anger towards the entity that deserves it, and make them fix their fuck-up.

(Note: I'm not making some kind of Libertarian "all government is bad" argument here. I'm saying that in this specific case, the laws need to be changed.)

Not everyone is able or willing to own their property, what would they do if landlords didn't exist?

My last landlord didn't raise my rent for seven years. I was thankful until I moved out and he still hasn't been able to re-rent the place after two years despite dropping the rent by $100. He just didn't want to risk losing his prize schmuck lol.

What I most hate is landlords who put an automatic 5% (or whatever) increase into an auto-renewing lease. It's bullshit because their mortgage generally isn't increasing like that.

I work at a credit union where we deal with a lot of smaller investors and many of them have properties where they aren't breaking even on a cash flow basis. But they are using the losses to lower their taxable income while building equity elsewhere. They are (from tenants I've heard from) good landlords. Lately we've been dealing with a lot of realtors that are buying up properties and that just doesn't sit well with me so I'm looking to change careers and get more into C&I and CRE rather than SFR investments. Being able to cash out 7.25 weeks of accrued vacation time I haven't been able to take too is a big plus.