The amount of people who "need" to rent for whatever reason is at least an order of magnitude smaller than the amount of people who are forced to rent because a

The amount of people who "need" to rent for whatever reason is at least an order of magnitude smaller than the amount of people who are forced to rent because all available housing is for rent instead of for sale. For example, there are a lot of people buying cars, and a lot less people renting cars, and for similars reason you stated above. If the housing market was balanced (as in not "completely cornered by landlords"), i'd expect a similar ratio of housing rental vs ownership, even taking into account the depreciating nature of cars.