Ah, envy - the usual driver of the socialist is rearing its head!
I am not sure the system is broken, although I do agree its likely to get worse the more politicians of every stripe meddle with it.
On the whole the bad landlords tend to get the bad tenants and the good landlords tend to find the good tenants, so in the main people tend to get what they deserve.
The main area of concern is if the population is allowed to continue to increase at a rate faster than houses are being built.
One other factor you may want to be aware of (although I'm sure your solution would consist of yet further regulation and bans) is that if you regulate a property owners rights away in the rental market he has a number of options - one is to sell up which as is clear doesn't mean the house disappears it then may become an owner occupied home or be bought up by another landlord. But a third option also exists that landlords have increasingly been turning to recently which is Airbnb type 'serviced' accommodation / holiday lets which sidestep a lot of the regulation that applies to normal residential lettings. But what this means is that in this instance, the property IS being lost as a dwelling house and now becomes a holiday let where nobody lives.
Much like Zero Hour Contracts are a market response to overbearing employment regulation, Airbnb is now being used by landlords to escape the overbearing rental market regulation that seeks to remove ones own property from ones own control.
Amongst other things, its people like Jacob who call for ever more regulation (strangulation) of sectors or practices that they dislike that actually pave the way for these alternative methods of doing business - which ironically they will hate even more than the original practice they hated.
But when did a socialist ever consider the unintended consequences of their demands as long as they were hurting those they hate that 'have'.