A lot of people like to think the world is either black or white with no in-between. As someone who works in construction and renovates houses a lot I can confirm that there are definitely good land lords as well as bad ones. My gf rented an appartment from old people before I met her and she paid almost nothing (400 euros all-inn), you can't even get social housing for that here. And the state of maintenance was excellent. Also in the more rural areas here the private rent sector seems to be run by mostly decen people.

Then sometimes we have to renovate ex-student housing and a lot of times those buildings are absolute dumps (to the point where you can barely call them habitable) with insane prices. Especially in the large cities I see some really bad practise. Thankfully a lot of those malicious kind of landlords are put on trial (hence why we start renovating after they sold the property).

Disclaimer: I don't live in the US and tenants have a lot of rights here to the point where landlords are forced to provide a certain standard of living. Unfortunately (foreign) students seem to not know this, this is the reason you mostly see malpractice with students here.