> You can have these things without owning a house.

Yes this is feasible, but respecting it as a design problem, renting is more transient than ownership and tilts the floor away from deep communal relationships.

Comparing the neighborhood I grew up in with the one I now live in is night and day. My mom has had the same next door neighbors for 44 years. Up and down the street there are many similarly familiar persons.

By comparison, from my own front door, I can only physically see two houses that are owner occupied. There are good neighbors (and friends!) in the rental houses as well, but investing in those relationships pays off with lower certainty because circumstance is very likely to uproot them at any given moment.