Providing a place to live is surely not one of those services though. There will always been some portion of the population that can't afford to buy a home. Without landlords, what are those people supposed to do?

>Providing a place to live is surely not one of those services though

that's not what landlords are. That's the construction company or the building manager and he or she's indeed doing a great service. Landlords are absentee owners who extract economic rent. You can of course, like say Vienna, nationalize most of the housing stock and hire people who provide actual services just the same.