It may be legal but is it moral?

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We have a serious tourism related problem here. Our little town of Portrush on the north coast is host to a most prestigious golf tournament- the Royal Portrush Open. I know nothing about golf but I’m told that this is a big deal. Big international names (which mean nothing to me) will be playing and very wealthy aficionados will be coming to watch, people who don’t need to ask how much the flights or hotels are because it doesn’t matter to them. Prices everywhere are jacked up beyond what common folk can afford. People are willing to pay thousands of pounds to stay in unremarkable holiday rental apartments for a couple of nights. On the news has been a young family who rent their home privately. They are always on time with the rent and are very good tenants and have been for 5 years. Now the landlord is refusing to renew their lease for another year because he can make in one week what he normally collects from that family in a year, and all because of the golf. What he’s doing is legal - changing the use of his property from residential to vacation use. But is it moral? The defence is always “Oh it’s just business” but that doesn’t make it right. This age old attitude of screwing every last penny out of people may make good business sense, but it flies in the face of Old Testament teaching. The requirement on landowners is that they should not harvest every last grain of wheat but leave some behind for the poor. Owners of vineyards were told not to go over the vines twice to make sure they got all the grapes, but to be content to leave behind any grapes they might have missed for the poor. Evicting ordinary people in order to get higher rents out of super wealthy golfing types surely must fall under these categories. Is maximising profit at the expense of others acceptable, even if it’s legal?