I mean, tbh. I do actually prefer not having to actually be personally responsible for literally all of the structural factors that go into maintaining where I live (i.e. plumbing, gas, electricity & maintenance of the physical structure of the building itself).
Most people feel that way, if I had to guess.
Mainly because I'm pretty sure I don't actually understand any of them well enough to know when they're a problem, or what to do about them
Even if you did it wouldn't be any fun having to do it. Landlords also don't know about this stuff either, usually. They usually hire people to perform these duties.
I'm pretty sure I couldn't actually afford to keep up with repairs to those systems if I lived in an independent house.
Rent is always more than maintenance. Otherwise the landlord wouldn't profit. If maintenance were actually more than they were charging you for rent they wouldn't have a profitable enterprise, which is the whole point of being a landlord, to passively make money off of others paying you a significant portion of their income. So if you can afford rent where you currently live chances are you could afford maintenance in a house of roughly the same size as your apartment. What will really set you under is mortgage and the absurd interest rates that come with it.
The problem here is not collectivized living, the problem is that one guy (or a corporation of people) gets to personally extract wealth from people living there. It is in fact very much like the gym example that you gave. It doesn't really make sense for every person on earth who would want to work out from time to time to own their own personal bench, squat-rack, plates set, dumbell set, cable machines & treadmill/stationary bike. That's a shitload of infrastructure all to facilitate like 45-90 minutes worth of activity per day, for just one guy. And that assumes a person who is significantly more motivated to train that p much 90% of people. And it actually doesn't make much sense for every single person/family to own their own individual house either. It's just the only way to escape landlords in our present arrangement of things.
Most people feel that way, if I had to guess.
Even if you did it wouldn't be any fun having to do it. Landlords also don't know about this stuff either, usually. They usually hire people to perform these duties.
Rent is always more than maintenance. Otherwise the landlord wouldn't profit. If maintenance were actually more than they were charging you for rent they wouldn't have a profitable enterprise, which is the whole point of being a landlord, to passively make money off of others paying you a significant portion of their income. So if you can afford rent where you currently live chances are you could afford maintenance in a house of roughly the same size as your apartment. What will really set you under is mortgage and the absurd interest rates that come with it.
Agreed.