I rent a home to people who are usually temporarily in the area for relocation or study or house hunting purposes. The average stay is 9 months. I am happy to sign longer tenancies, but usually people don't want to. I try really hard to be a good landlord and provide a beautiful home in excellent repair at a reasonable rent that represents about 25% of their average household incomes.
There have been times when we have had very high mortgage repayments and have had to top up the income from the rent in order to keep the show on the road. More recently the property has generated a profit. So there are ups and downs. Some years we spend a lot on maintenance, sometimes relatively little. That is how investments work.
One day we will move back into this house when we downsize, after the kids have grown up. In the meantime, nobody is deprived of a home at all and in fact it allows some flexibility for people in the rather strange housing market in our area. If there were no rental homes they would presumably have to stay in guest houses for weeks or months while organising themselves and learning about the local area, or arranging to buy a home.
So yes, I do provide a service, my tenants appreciate this service, and I am proud of being able to do this.
I do have a concern with older people living alone in huge houses they bought really cheaply in the 1960s and 1970s because of a lack of incentive to move, and I think this is a bigger aspect of the family housing supply problem locally. Perhaps if there was a bedroom tax for all of us, for unoccupied rooms, we might be able to share the available housing out rather better. But ultimately we need to build more.