Nicola,the vast majority of landlords see the money they make off the properties they own,or are buying as going towards their pension pot and I don't see anything wrong with that.But the fact remains that the vast majority of these landlords are scurrilous toe rags who care not a jot for the people they house or the communities they drag down as they let their properties gradually fall into shocking states of disrepair because they will not spend money on them due to a lack of legislation or legislation not being enforced by the local council.This begs the question,what chance is their of the local council enforcing what little legislation there is on these scum landlords,as my personal research shows that a lot of these properties are indeed owned by local councillors.I don't know if you are old enough to remember Nicola but in years gone by,when the vast majority of people that couldn't afford to buy a house of their own for one reason or another,rented a property from the local council and indeed their were some unsavoury characters that inhabited these dwellings and if they stepped over the mark at least they could be tempered by the local council into mending their ways so as not to impinge on the rest of the community,or face being evicted.The houses were well maintained and helped to instill pride and gave people dignity and open spaces to raise a family,there were even prizes for the best maintained gardens in various parts of the town,this all made for a better society all round for the benefit of everyone.Then,along came Mrs Thatcher with her band of anti working class reactionaries.Deregulation was the name of the game with eventually council house dwellings falling victim to these policies.I could go much deeper Nicola,but,what we see all around us now,particularly in housing accommodation is the results of deregulation and the insidious scum that are leaching money from these inhuman policies and slowly destroying whole swathes of communities,not only destroying communities,but destroying peoples self belief and pride by inflicting some of these horrendous living conditions on them.As I have said Nicola,yes there are some unsavoury characters and,as you say some slovenly thugs that inhabit these properties but,remember,what you are witnessing in a lot of these cases are a direct result of what I have just mentioned,a lot of these people have been brought up in these conditions and know no better-sow bad seeds and you will reap a bad crop-,there is absolutely no difference between the scum and slovenly thugs who inhabit some of these properties and the scum and slovenly thugs who rent them out in the name of,above all else,profit.

What a shock I got recently when I learnt that a Slum Landlord in our street is a 'respectable' nurse. Not only a Slum landlord, she has rented the house to a family of slovenly thugs who immediately spray painted the paving slabs outside the house, and use the backstreet as a tip for dirty disposable nappies.