From this Yahoo article: https://www.yahoo.com/video/perfect-storm-brewing-family-housing-204000180.html
This is the problem with real estate investing companies. They purchase affordable housing for investment purposes to rent out for profit. If they can not figure out their business model and probably should be out of business if they are not profitable, they just push cost increases along to people, who can only afford to rent because all affordable properties were bought up by massively funded companies to rent out for massive profits.
People are naturally going to pay more money than be homeless. Housing is an inelastic demand and these companies know this, and if people cannot pay up, they send people to the streets. They buy up housing in all areas, often leaving desperate consumers no affordable options, or just homeless.
These companies operate on the same principles as car dealerships (stealerships)- they wedge themselves between the consumer and the product consumers often need. They do everything they can to prevent the consumer from getting what they need, unless they pay a markup for no other reason than to enrich these very middle companies. These middle companies are nothing but leeches.
A recommendation if business is not sustainable – don't be in that business, rather than take subsidies from governments and attempt to squeeze peoples' wallets dry for something their lives depend on. There are plenty of other ways to be a profitable company rather than generate no actual value and dangle a person's essential needs over their head unless they pay up.
State, local, and federal governments need to enact policies to disallow certain allocations and perhaps even zones from being owned by any corporate entities. Speculative investing and other forms of investment must be isolated as much as possible from basic and essential human needs. Otherwise, we get companies that only can stay afloat by leeching off of consumers.