Is this a scam or a trap? Do landlords really collude with student loan institutions, or are landlords simply leveraging 1. the necessity of their resource and 2. the lack of rent control? There's no basic regulation on what fraction of income landlords can charge tenants, and landlords get critical financial information on tenants. If loans are so easy to obtain, there's zero incentive for landlords not to gouge tenants (by progressively raising rents).

I don't see how any explicit fraud is happening. I also don't see how things will ever get better without tighter regulation of rents. Well I guess we could turn down loans and kill the demand ...