This is incorrect. Houses can be sold and folks can move in with family. Or, you can rent out the house, often at a profit. I know several people who have done

This is incorrect. Houses can be sold and folks can move in with family. Or, you can rent out the house, often at a profit. I know several people who have done this. Furthermore, in most places in the U.S. a mortgage payment is cheaper than the rent on a similar dwelling. I originally had no plans to buy a house, but I did the math and my mortgage is about 25-35% less that what I would pay for an equivalent rental. Even factoring in maintenance costs, that's still a huge win. And that's not even getting into the tax benefits. In the case of a job loss or financial disaster, you can sell the house, or if you can't you can just go on living there, often for years while the bank meanders its way through the foreclosure process. So you may lose some principal in the end, but you'll have had several years of free housing to make up for it. There are plenty of reasons not to own a house - maintenance is a pain and time consuming, yard work sucks, etc., but financially, owning a house is a no brainer in most U.S. geographies.