Housing co-ops are a thing that exist. Governments can also conceivably own rental properties. It’s property management that does most of the work anyway and they get paid like anyone else to do a job.
Landlords are a drain on the economy and there are viable alternative models. We do not need landlords.
Landlords are the people that own the property and take profit for it. Sometimes they manage the property, in a lot of cases they don’t. Sometimes they are corporations, sometimes they aren’t. In any case they are collecting rents and taking profit from those rents solely by virtue of owning the property.
In the alternatives I mentioned, co-ops and government, neither of those entities need profit. Co-ops are just owned by the collective of the residents. They would pay their rent in order to pay off taxes and utilities and maintenance expenses.
Landlords are a drain on the economy and there are viable alternative models. We do not need landlords.