The two things are fairly tightly connected. If ordinary citizens can't buy house, how does some other citizen (not corporation) buy one and offer it for rent to you?
There are a lot of individuals who buy investment properties. I have friends who use this as their primary retirement vehicle and own a bunch of rental properties. They are just successful small-business owners and the properties are their private property, unrelated to the business. From last time I saw statistics on this, most rental units were still owned by small landlords.