The entire concept of "rent" needs to die in a goddamn fire. There are much better arrangements to fill the niche you are talking about. What is lacking is a regulatory environment making those arrangements preferable to rent.

"Rent" is typically a year-to-year arrangement. Every year, the deal is renegotiated and the tenant ends up paying more.

A "Land Contract" is (initially) similar to rent, but it is negotiated only once, and the monthly fee is fixed for the life of the agreement, like a mortgage.

For the first three years of the agreement, you pay your monthly fee, and you live in the home. You are free to walk away at any time.

If you stay longer than three years, the entire agreement automatically converts to a private mortgage, with your first three years of payments considered the down payment. You continue to make the same payment, but now you are earning equity.

All that is well and good, but landlords won't offer land contracts, because land contracts favor the tenant/buyer.

Not to worry. We're going to restructure property taxes. We're going to have landlords begging tenants to switch to land contracts. The way we do it is by offering an owner-occupant exemption to property taxes. This is called a "homestead exemption" in some states. Basically, if you occupy a home, you pay a tiny fraction of the property taxes that you would owe if you didn't occupy that home. Or, more accurately, if you are an investor, your property tax rate is going to the moon.

Land Contract tenants/buyers are considered "owners". The property you are living in is owned by the occupants, and financed by the landlord/seller. The property taxes are at the owner-occupant rate, not the investor rate. Property taxes on "rentals" melt all the profits the landlord could be earning, so they are incentivized to switch to land contracts.

So everyone who has enough money to rent, but not enough to own, should be homeless?

The concept of someone having enough money to rent but not enough to own is ghoulish in the first place. If my landlord can pay $<1,200 for this house's mortgage and upkeep, and I can pay $1,200 a month for the right to sleep in it, then we should simply cut out the middle man and have me pay that $<1,200 a month for mortgage and upkeep directly.

So everyone who has enough money to rent, but not enough to own, should be homeless?

Who said that? Other than you?

No, the system should be changed to not arbitrarily restrict people's access to necessities.

Housing, and other necessities, should be community property. If you don't live in the house, you forfeit ownership of that house so someone else who needs it can live in it. Fuck the exploitative system of private property ownership.

Renting is only necessitated because we live in a capitalist system. All your complaints only exist because of the capitalist system. It doesn't need to exist.