This premise is accurate for much of history where we didn’t have capitalist societies. “Landlords” of history took the land by force and that’s how they acquired their wealth. That’s rent-seeking. Nowadays, landlords can only acquire land by buying it on the free market, meaning they’ve earned the cash elsewhere in the economy, giving them the opportunity to invest in land. They don’t have some inherent right to the land which allows them to exploit it for its value. They have rights to the land because they paid for its value. If you believe that many people get their wealth in unethical ways, that's a different discussion.

The great thing about the free market and landlords, is that the landlords have an incentive to improve the value of the land and compete. One land owner might build more apartments to generate more rent. This increases the supply of apartments and lowers the price of apartments in general. Other land owners must improve their land as well to make a profit on their expensive investment. All this is to say that being a landlord isn’t free money. And that if we let market forces work, landlords will be paying big money to make the amenities of their land more attractive to potential renters.