A Leftist Defense of Landlords (Sort Of)

Okay, so here’s something that’s gonna sound like a hot take. Maybe even a really hot take.

A lot of folks — especially on the left — think landlords are evil, greedy, parasitic, lazy, and all the rest. You’ve heard it before: “Landlords don’t work, they just sit around collecting rent!”

But here’s the thing. Landlords, whether people like it or not, provide housing. And they handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff that tenants never have to think about. The tenant, in most cases, just pays rent — that’s it. The landlord deals with the logistics: maintenance, repairs, taxes, utilities, insurance, property upkeep, coordination, the works.

Now, do I think housing should be free? Absolutely. I’m not defending capitalism here. But I am saying that, under this current system — under capitalism — landlords are playing by the rules that exist. And within that system, they actually do perform work.

Think of them as logistics coordinators or small-scale business owners. They’re running a business — one that happens to involve property. We might hate the game, but they didn’t invent it.

The problem is that a lot of people conflate the system with the people inside it. Folks pour all their emotions into this — which makes sense, because housing is emotional. It’s survival. It’s dignity. But when we step back and look at it structurally, it’s more complicated than “landlords bad, tenants good.”

Let’s be real: even if housing were completely free tomorrow, we’d still need landlord-like figures. People to maintain the buildings, coordinate repairs, make sure the plumbing works, and handle whatever comes up. Someone has to manage those logistics. Whether they’re called landlords, property managers, maintenance coordinators, or whatever — that function doesn’t just disappear in a socialist or anarchist world. It just changes form.

So yeah, maybe the landlord-tenant dynamic isn’t perfect. Maybe it even sucks sometimes. But let’s stop pretending that landlords do nothing. Because owning and maintaining property can be a logistical nightmare — full of paperwork, taxes, codes, and constant maintenance issues.

The real issue isn’t that landlords exist. It’s that rent exists.

If we removed the profit motive and made housing a public good — community-owned, co-op managed, collectively maintained — we’d still have people performing those same organizational and maintenance roles. We’d just call them something else, and they’d do it for the sake of the community, not profit.

So no, I’m not saying we should worship landlords. But I am saying: let’s be a bit more nuanced before we lump every single one into the “evil capitalist” pile. Because the truth is, we don’t hate the job — we hate the system that turns that job into a source of profit instead of a public service.