Anyway, as you were pointing out, if you get a mortgage it is not your house, it is the bank's house, and you have to pay renovations and work yourself. Furthermore when you'll have finished paying it will be in need of serious renovation work.
The stark reality today though is that interest rates in banks are pathetic... if you saved up 50K in the 1980s here and put it in the bank you might have 80-90K by now, but in the 1980s 50K (which by the way is an enormous amount of money back then... that would easily buy you a house), could have bought about 10 lake front properties in Wanaka... I am talking empty sections here...
Today that 5K dollar section would be worth more than half a million dollars, so if you kept them all you would be looking at about 5 million dollars.
So despite the bank owning your home till you pay off the loan, the value of the house will only increase, and if you do it right the loan payments will work out less than you would pay if you were renting, so it certainly does make sense.
The question about our house was pure nonsense and not any sort of objective one. The expectation of the humans who are
given everything that matters for free is that one gets those things for free.
But getting free accommodation based on the job you get (ie location) that is provided by the government is not really free because it is not really yours.
Also government provided homes are generic and utilitarian and certainly not something you would be allowed to renovate or upgrade yourself.
Government provided housing would come in a range of types in specific locations for specific purposes... you would have houses for workers in forests or farms that would be located near those forests and farm, as well as houses for government workers near their place of work, and of course retirement homes for people no longer working.
Each type of house would be optimised for the intended occupant, but there would not be a huge variety of designs... as I said simple and utilitarian.
Houses for young families and workers might have gardens and areas of grass, but for retirement villages such things cost money to get someone in to maintain them.
When I was growing up most families owned a crib.... a holiday home... they were often fairly basic and out in places you would go holidaying.
These days they are bought as investments and are too expensive to own and leave empty 8-10 months of the year.
There was a reason communism failed. It did not deal with real human psychology. This fact cannot be fobbed off.
Democracy is clearly not working either... it has become a popularity contest with the candidates looking more and more like gameshow hosts, who pretend they are wanting to lead a ship and head to clear flat waters where everyone can make good progress to their destination... but the politicians on both sides don't care about voters, they care about the very rich who pay their bills and control the media and therefore also the people.
Some Polish dipshit went off on a rant that Russia will be able to invade any EU country after Nord Stream II is finished.
Russia can already invade any EU country, but what would be the point... they all seem to be full of Nazi sympathisers... better to just destroy them rather than invade.