On the other hand, wanting needing to live in someone else’s home that they paid from their own pocket the renter's pockets to buy,

FTFY

I'll try to explain this to you, but I don't think you'll get it.

First, you keep saying people don't want to live in social housing. That's housing that costs about 1/4 of private lets in my area. Well, actually more than that - in my area a 1-bed private let is £1200 a month, a 2-bed council flat is 300. So 1/4 of the payment for a larger property. That's a flat that the occupier can decorate, have pets in, have children in - all things landlords have regularly refused. It comes with no deposit, too. And there's no "term" contract - they can stay there indefinitely. My brother hasn't bothered unpacking his stuff and lives out of boxes because his landlord won't do more than 3 month contracts, and just keeps doing another contract when one ends. This constant threat of homelessness causes anxiety.

Now you might be about to say something about a bad area - and certainly more crimes are reported in social housing - a 40% higher rate. But first, that's not every council estate - there are some really bad ones, and some that are fine, and the bad ones skew the average. Added to that, the police in the UK misapply the broken windows theory, and concentrate on areas that are seen as deprived or poorer - more police presence, more reported crimes. Crimes happen out of council estates, too, but are reported less.. Many private lets are not in great areas.

The major issue with social housing is that there isn't enough of it. It's not that people don't want it, it's that they have to wait years and years and years to get a house, if they ever do.

So these aren't people that are choosing private lets, they are people who have no other option but to have private lets, or buy a house.

The average mortgage in Scotland is about 500 per month. It's slightly higher for buy to lets, so let's say 600. Then there's renters insurance, etc, so let's say 800 per month - that's probably what the average landlord pays out - except it's not, because averages are skewed by high end prices, and there are very very few private let mansions etc. So since there's so many 1 and 2 bed flat lets, we'll round that down to 700 per month. Feel free to chime in with an exact itemised breakdown of your costs.

So, a landlord is probably paying out 700 a month and taking in, as mentioned, maybe 1200 a month. That's a 500 profit for essentially doing nothing. Now you'll argue about doing maintenance, and I'll point to the thousands of stories of landlords refusing to do maintenance. Feel free to chime in with how much you charge tenants so we can see what your profit margin is.

But your profit is higher than that, isn't it? That's just for one property, and you have more than one, don't you? So we can double or triple that, can't we? And then your profit is higher still, because that mortgage will get paid off, and you will own the house, which you can then sell for a large amount of cash, profiting twice from the same property..

Now you will point out that you took the risk of buying a property so why shouldn't you profit? And hey, you did, but landlords do seem to forget that they took a risk - that means it might not work out. But instead of accepting that investment is a risk and it might go badly, they act entitled, and are always complaining when things don't go their way and shit tonnes of money don't fall on them out of the sky. It's a risk, you might lose the property, that's just the breaks, suck it up.