No offense taken. Cleaving away my very personal anger about how my dad's wealth fucked over my college plans: Moral culpability for high housing prices lies primarily with those who enact the housing regulations which artificially constrain supply, and hence allow long-term profits to be made in a market which really should drift down towards prefect competition, and not with the actual housing providers themselves, who are just ordinary profit-seeking business owners like the rest of us. You're doing a service to your fellow man, no matter what, because voluntary trade benefits both parties by definition.
People often get in fights about the thorny intermediate layer here, which is that politics and economics intertwine. Many landlords politically advocate for further supply-constraining laws in their area, because surprise surprise, long-term profits are a really sweet deal if you can get them. I have no qualms saying that that is both (a) perfectly economically rational and (b) still a wrong thing to do. But I want to underline that that is mostly missing the forest for the trees here, which is housing regulations being a well entrenched thing in the first place.
Man I'm with you all the way. I was also lucky to be born in a place where college education is very affordable: around 1K/year flat fee for everyone. It sounds like you got a raw deal.
People often get in fights about the thorny intermediate layer here, which is that politics and economics intertwine. Many landlords politically advocate for further supply-constraining laws in their area, because surprise surprise, long-term profits are a really sweet deal if you can get them. I have no qualms saying that that is both (a) perfectly economically rational and (b) still a wrong thing to do. But I want to underline that that is mostly missing the forest for the trees here, which is housing regulations being a well entrenched thing in the first place.