All of those thing, no matter where you live, is included in the price that you pay for your dwelling. You are paying for them anyway. (Most places don't include all utilities; you have to pay that separately.)
Any rental business that does not include its costs in its product price is doomed to fail. It's a given, all those taxes, maintenance, insurance, etc. costs are in the cost of your dwelling if you rent. It's just a fact. Unless, of course, you rent from your momma, and she's giving you a deal out of the bigness of her heart.
An investment does NOT have to produce a capital gain in the sense of the market and the tax tables.
Shelter is a necessity. It must be taken care of one way or another.
The same with "investing" in a family garden. You've got to have food anyway. This way you have nothing to report to the tax tables, and you have the cost of sweat equity, but you also have a REAL product you can use to offset what would otherwise be necessary costs.
Not true, I wish it were.
Rent is limited by demand. In large urban areas it's not uncommon for renters to not pay for heat and water. The cost of repair, maintenance, upgrades is typically averaged out over a large number of units.
Any rental business that does not include its costs in its product price is doomed to fail.
It's not that simple. The critical factor is how many units you have to spread the cost over and what the market rent is in the area. Because of the condo conversion boom there are a huge number of rental units (owners can't sell for what they bought them for) that are on the market lowering the net rents that can be charged.
It's like any business that sees the demand for their product less because of over supply. You cut operating costs and wait for the supply to be eaten up.