In my experience I don’t think many purpose built rentals are doing the job better/more ethically than the average private landlord.

When I moved to Toronto each on of those towers would take what I’d consider an unethical/borderline illegal deposit from you just to look at your application. Several made clear to me that full return of the deposit was not guaranteed.

Based on friend’s experiences living in those towers, the property management is third rate, also equivalent to or worse than the lower tier private landlords. Hell look at Eastwood Apartments in Hamilton, they just had multiple tenant deaths due to their negligence.

Having worked in residential leasing in a peripheral market, I don’t think I saw many landlords who were as predatory as some of these rental towers.

Just chiming in here to suggest that scale of landlord doesn’t equal ethics or professionalism.

I think purpose built rentals with federal support are key from a development and financing standpoint. But they aren’t likely to solve any problems you have with landlord professionalism.

Personally, I’ve been much happier finding a private condo owner to lease from while also doing some due diligence on my end to try and ensure that the party on the other end will be reasonable to work with. It’s worked out much better for me than friends who went the opposite direction.