No Stupid Questions

An aside, but the "parasite" thing is not really a leftist talking point. We stole it from Adam fucking Smith, and his point about it is that extracting value from something on the basis of just, like, owning something that exists with or without you is inherently shitty personally, and economically.

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce" - Adam Smith

Just look it up. He crashes out on rentiers all the time.

Also, corporate land lords are a much smaller part of the problem than most people suggest. Like, yes corporate land lords suck, but most land lords are not corporate landlords. It's more complex than that. Source. So, Yes. Small "Mom and Pop" landlords are bad, and there is a moral dimension to even the people you personally know who own more than one home, and there will continue to be as long as there are others who do not have a house.

I would still consider this horizontal violence. That equity could be used to make the world a better place instead of extracting value from fellow workers to pay for their kids college and inheritance ... and where the debts incurred buying 5 properties?

You're right that they are good people, because no one sees themselves as the villain in their own story. That insurance CEOs wife isn't lying when she says good things about him. Capitalism not only alienates you from your labour but also from your exploitation of others.

The sheer weight of human misery in your immediate surroundings is immeasurable and you never pay it any mind.

Imo, what your aunt is doing is okay as long as she doesnt start hoarding more and more houses and acts fairly. There is some value in not having to deal with problems that come with owning apartment but uncertainty of the world burns that value away easily. As landlord you have a duty to take care of your tenants and if you cant do that then you shouldnt be allowed to own property like that.

There are parasites and there are big parasites. Being a land lord is inherently parasitic to a certain extent. And we were ourselves landlords for a while. When a job took us out of state, we didn’t want to leave where we were so we rented out our house for under market rate until we returned. In my opinion, we were still being parasites to a limited extent.

Lots of perfectly nice, pleasant, and moral people do jobs that make the world a worst place because of the circumstances they find themselves in. I would separate out how you treat and judge people, from the problematic systems that they might operate in.

But unless your aunt is only charging them what it costs her to operate the buildings + a reasonable hourly wage for the actual time she spends on the house every year, then yeah it's immoral.

If she puts in 10 hours a month and charges rent that is equal to her costs (not the property / mortgage costs, but just the ongoing operating and maintenance costs) + 120hrs of her time per year x ~$25/hr (or whatever wage is livable in your area) then it's fair, but realistically, assuming $6000 of property taxes, that would mean she would be charging ~$800 / month for that town home, and I'm guessing she's charging a lot more. In effect, that means that she is making renters pay for her mortgages while she's not working, and at the end of the day she will end up a multimillionaire off of her tenants' hard work.

On top of the fact that there are undoubtedly renters who would want to buy those townhomes but can't afford to only because landlords have bought up a limited supply and driven up prices.