Encourage your friends to commit to leaving if they have the means to do so. Within your friends’ lifetimes, the USA will never get better than it is right now (and overall it’s unprecedentedly bad right now).
To OP’s question: I don’t really consider their aunt’s ownership of a few houses to be a practical problem, and she is generally not who I am referring to when I say that landlords are terrible parasites, unless she overcharges (and no, I don’t mean above market rate) or treat the tenants with disrespect. She was told her whole life that investing in real estate is a smart thing to do and provides financial security.
The problem is with lack of regulations, such as how many buildings someone is allowed to own, corporate ownership, rent prices…things like that.
I used a bicycle in a Walgreens pharmacy drive though for the whole summer, and then one day a manager told me they won’t serve me there anymore because of “safety reasons”.
What they meant was for their safety, from liability, like if a car hit me.
I don’t use Walgreens for prescriptions anymore.