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I suppose this is a good example of how much of a bubble I live in that everyone that I spend much time talking to about finances would understand this to be an intuitive and obvious result, not a surprise. That the tenants bring more money and less risk immediately implies that the rate of return should be expected to be lower in any environment where the investors are decently informed about the relative expected profits and risk profiles. This is the opposite of surprising, it's an expected, intuitive, and appropriate outcome. One doesn't even need to get into how unpleasant dealing with lower class tenants is, just including the increased scale and decreased risk of higher class tenants makes the result that landlords willing to serve the lower class will have higher margins obvious.
To move onto pieces that aren't as obvious to people who haven't dealt with rental properties at all, we can then add that low-class tenants require much more time investment to deal with damage to properties, evictions, collection of payment, and even crime. Since property management requires actual labor rather than just being an input-free source of profit, it stands to reason that the increase management labor will further increase the required ratio of rent to capital. I suppose on some level this isn't quite fair for a poor tenant actually does their best to make payment, but in the aggregate, I'm not seeing the unfairness.
On a subjective level, I absolutely promise that I would prefer to take lower returns on my investments in exchange for not dealing with the underclass - I cannot exaggerate how terrible the poor are to deal with when it comes to rental properties. The endless array of excuses, the filth that many of these people live in and subject property to, the low-level criminality, the lying about other occupants and pets, the badly behaved children that destroy cupboards, trim, and other pieces of property... it's all more than you can imagine if you're a normal middle-class person. All any normal investor wants is to put up capital, provide a decent service, and receive payment in return for it, but you're going to get much more than you bargained for if you sign up to provide housing to the poor.
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