Every time a topic like this comes up I try to explain the reality for some normal, average income, private landlords. Wasting my time because it's much more "fashionable" to rant away and ignore fact. Now we've even got someone saying landlords shouldn't be allowed to post. So, for the last time on a rented property discussion including this one - here are my "scum landlord" facts.
I don't own or have any claim on the property I live in, so my two little flats are my possible retirement investment. I say possible because who knows what will happen to house prices, but that's the risk I decided to take. I brought them with everything I had left after my divorce. Having been forced out of the home I brought alone before my marriage.
I don't charge "inflated" rents, my rents are somewhere below the maximum in each development, because I prefer to have people in the flats, rather than wait with them empty to get the highest rent.
At the moment there is a "profit" because the interest rates are low. I salt that away for maintenance, "void" periods, and against the day when interest rates will go up again. In other words, I don't rub my "fat belly" and spend it, I expect it to be absorbed. The only profit I hope to make is some time in the far future when I sell. As said above, it's a risk.
My flats are well maintained, the tenants never wait for a repair, I see it as my duty to provide them with a nice place to live in.
I worked for a while in a council housing department and they treated their tenants like dirt. I would never treat anyone like that, I haven't even treated people behind on their rent like that.
My personal income from work is below the national average. (And I'm taking a break from work now, in my little home office, on a Sunday).
It seems to me that it's very easy to typecast landlords (and tenants) and then rant away on an internet discussion forum. It takes much more thought to understand that there are good and bad on both sides. It takes a bit of effort to think about how the current unsatisfactory aspects of the rental market might be changed. How both sides could be better protected. Many here aren't willing to take the time or expend the brain power needed to do that. If it feels good to rant mindlessly then it's a free country, but it's not constructive and it doesn't help anything.
If you think all private landlords are scum the answer is simple. Don't rent from them, don't give them the money. In fact, maybe private landlords should be hounded until they no longer find it a worthwhile enterprise. Imagine how difficult it will be to rent a home then. 
Throw all the insults you like, I'm hiding the thread now. 