It's actually pretty simple to break it down if you try to think about it. Rent seeking is evil when the renters absolutely need the service and cannot afford ownership. Otherwise, it's a service that some find useful. Home rentals would be awesome if it was only for vacations or because someone didn't feel like dealing with maintenance. In reality, everyone needs a place to sleep at night and many cannot afford it. The people who make it unaffordable to own a home by buying up all inventory and then renting it back are absolutely leaches. Comparing camera equipment rentals to home ownership likewise lacks morality.

In the San Francisco for example, the minimum wage is $16.32/hr or ~$33K/year. The median price per square foot is $1000/sqft. A person earning minimum wage will never be able to buy property in San Francisco. Instead they're forced to spend most of their income on rent creating a cycle of poverty by preventing property ownership & wealth accumulation. The property owning class of the Bay Area desperately depends the poverty class yet burns the ladder up. We complain about the homelessness and crime yet trap people into poverty by blowing up every bill that would create affordable housing.

I will absolutely cheer for the failure of any company looking to profit from exacerbating the problem. I hope you can now understand the difference between renting a camera and being permanently unable to afford a place to sleep.

You're being disingenuous. All of those things you listed fulfill a temporary or geographically localized need, and are very short term. On the other hand, people often spend an entire generation in one apartment. Those categories are wholly unalike each other, and it's clear because the category of actually short term housing also exists, hotels.

Likewise, long term car rentals exist, they're called leases.

That's the core of the issue, tools have elastic supply and demand. A tool rental business meaningfully assists in matching the two - it's very likely a tool I rent would not exist otherwise, or if it did, it's because I financed it, a much greater expense for me for little gain. I wish there was more tool and car rental.

Housing, for the most part, does not do this. New housing is rare, and I can't walk away from that market, or even reduce my usage without severe loss of quality of life.

So yes, the only thing a landlord did for me is have more money than me when I was born, which if you look closely, isn't actually a service at all.