My current goal is to build a close team that I can count on, that can count on me, and to own 4 long term rentals in the next 4 years. 

Will that count as my personal income?

Not to mention the fact that the criminals, once identified, can be counted on to dig themselves in even deeper on the way to realizing their jig is up. 

For short-term rentals (STR), your household needs to meet material participation rules and both of your hours counts towards the MP hours.

I guess I'm asking for something like a hard money lender, but I don't know if they lend on assets you already own.I guess you could put the paid off rental in a sandbox (trust, or corporation) so that the income from that rental is only counted against the debt from that rental then take basically any loan on it, but outside of that what options are there?

For some context I'm hoping to invest immediately when I begin working (1 year from now), and am alright with moving whenever there is a better opportunity for my job/RE investing.Can always count on the BP community to give great advice, so I'm looking forward to everyone's perspectives on a slightly large life decision of mine!

Retirement accounts don't count towards liquidity, nor do non-liquid investments like VC, etc. 

Section 8 typically has a cap on the rent rate, dependent on bedroom counts.

They list the rents based on bedroom count on their website3- This depends on the housing authority.

We haven't really had any problems managing a property, unless you count cleaner issues, etc. as part of it.