You could argue that they are providing the same value as the city is (housing). It's not like this is some kind of either or situation. The city is providing

You could argue that they are providing the same value as the city is (housing). It's not like this is some kind of either or situation. The city is providing value, approximately 500.000 housing units worth of value. Private landlords provide value, the remaining one point something million units worth of housing. You could of course replace either provider, it doesn't make a practical difference whether you are renting from the city or a private landlord, at least not if we are looking at this from a top down perspective with hundreds of thousands of units. But the whole point of the city buying into the market was to create competition and ensure that the property market isn't used as an investment/doesn't pay as great as another investment. So with that in mind the current system is actually kind of what they were aiming for.