The reality is we live in a capitalist society whether we like it or not (at least in the US - emigrating isn't easy). Free housing would be the local shelter for the homeless.. It's there, but it's a bare minimum most of us don't want.

Your idealized expectation sounds nice, but a lot of houses and their lots wouldn't look like what they do outside of a capitalist society.. I wouldn't have two spare bedrooms in my home for an office and guest room when I want to have family visit. I wouldn't have a backyard for my dog to run around in.. It'd be more like what you see in North Korea. No excess to spare (to some degree is a good thing, but I also believe one should be able to earn themselves nicer things should they decide to take on the extra work to do so).

Rather than have some assigned lesser unit to live in that's paid for with my taxes, probably sharing walls with my neighbors, I think I'd rather put in the decade of renting I did while saving for the house I get to live in now.

Again, I'm not saying we have a perfect system, or even a great one.. It's fucked up in many ways, you'd have to have your head pretty far up your own ass to miss the amount of corruption that capitalism invites into our society (mostly stemming from money in politics), but there are also some good parts to it.

Maybe I'm the outlier here with this take?