A lot of desperate people looking for ridiculously cheap rent or "work for rent for situations" (as if that last one even exists).But, amongst the fodder, you will also find legitimate potential tenants who just prefer for landlords to find them. 

Almost always, the operators, large and small, need outside help from either a legitimate consultancy or a regulatory law firm or both.

Ultimate goal is to create some passive income to enable my wife to stay at home with our daughter.

Check with a knowledgeable professional to be sure you're not running afoul of any prohibited transactions such as enabling (using IRA funds to enable a personal investment).

It enables you to scan receipts from your phone and it's OCR capability "reads" pertinent information and integrates into Quickbooks eliminating a lot of data entry and paper records.

I HATE debt but that mindset enabled me to build an extremely high score that, ironically, I now use to leverage my credit cards for real estate (this is something I do and wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone as you have to be extremely disciplined to do this effectively).   

So you can buy a house and then sell it for a profit, buy you cannot have someone else buy a house and you get the difference between the seller cost and the buyer cost.I have been told by a real estate attorney, that if you want to wholesale in Ohio, you must have a legitimate down payment involved, that you are willing to loose if the deal falls apart ($500-$1,000).

Both of those are legitimate reasons.

Or is this a scenario where I might legitimately charge some small extra amount for the basement (such as for storage) - or otherwise just keep it locked off separately from the rest of the house?

Just make sure your references are legitimate and get their permission to talk about them.