Okay, so we agree that there is a problem then.

The source of the disagreement isn't that there isn't a problem, but what the source of the problem is and how we should go about addressing it.

You mean vacation homes. People who own multiple properties so that can sit vacant the majority of the year.

Only 4.6% of the housing stock in the US are second homes (source). Even if they were all available, that's not enough to make a dent in the housing market. Not to mention that most of these homes are in states like Vermont, Maine, and West Virginia where the housing crises is not the worse because houses there are cheaper than elsewhere and the demand is lower than elsewhere.

it does not provide a number or a link.

It does provide a link to a study actually, check again.

2 houses undergoing renovations counts as “some”.

Different source, but the number of vacant houses held by investors is around 880,000 or 63% of vacant houses in the country (source). There's no data for renovations specifically, but a portion of this figure would fall under that category.

That’s exactly the fucking problem. Yes.

It's a factor, but there's still not enough vacant units held by investors to meet demand. We have an actual housing shortage.

So we agree that the majority of rental properties are owned by a landlord that is making life objectively worse for people?

No, we don't. I agree that some landlords are slum lords and they're bad, and I also agree that a lot of corporate landlords aren't great, but landlords are like any other other service providers, there's good and bad.

Then we should do something about that instead of clutching pearls about the 1% of houses owned by “mom and pop landlord”

This is just false. Small rental properties are defined as buildings that have 1-4 units, they make up 46% of the rental market in the US, and over 70% are own by private individuals, and around 70% are managed by the same owners (source). That's a pretty significant portion.

I have family members who are exactly the type of people you are talking about. They own a rental property and take care of it and their renters. If suddenly they couldn’t do that anymore they would be fine. The property is not their livelihood, it’s an investment.

Speak for yourself. You can't make sweeping generalizations or conclusions off of your anecdotes. I know a few people who own duplex and triplexes, and they would literally be homeless if they did not have their tenants helping them out. You're oversimplifying things to fuel a narrative you subscribe to rather than looking at things through an objective lens.

Property can be affordable or be an investment, not both. I’m arguing that it should be affordable (being a basic requirement for survival and all). People using it as an investment can go invest somewhere else.

Property can be both because there are different types of property. When it comes to housing specifically, if we want average homes to become more affordable and remove the investment aspect of them then we have to build new houses. We have to build so many new houses that not only do we fill up the inventory shortage and meet demand, but go far beyond that to the point where we turn the housing market into a buyer's market forcing sellers and developers to compete. That's how we can get a plentiful supply, that's genuinely affordable for middle class and working class people.

There’s a reason rent seeking behavior is a derogatory term.

This term is defining certain behaviors that are unethical, harmful, and immoral. The actual concept of renting itself is fine. You're paying a fee to a get a service, there's nothing inherently wrong with that.