As an also actual living human, I rent strictly to seniors, our rent is $4-500 cheaper than anything else comparable in town because they live on fixed income and I am a paramedic/firefighter that works 3 jobs to survive. I am not one of the scumbags (I don't think?) I don't make much of a profit because I refuse to raise the rent on a bunch of widowed old ladies living on fixed incomes and I put my resources back into the units to maintain or improve their living conditions. Yeah, it increases the property value. So I'm not going to pretend it's pure charity, it is a business. But I am not gouging my tenants while I very much can during the housing shortage like every other landlord in my small town.

If I gave it away it would just be bought up by the same monopoly that owns every other complex in my town. He has offered me 3 times what I paid and I refused to sell. Not because I wouldn't LOVE the money, but because the tenants that are pretty much family, that have watched my kids grow up, that have gone to my wedding, would all immediately be out on their ass.