Single homes ought to be owned, and multi-tenant apartment buildings ought to be rented.
Why? One case you are observing in the article. Renters of home don't care about keeping up their house. Spending any kind of money on it is just not their priority. The only one who can keep up the house is owner, but as you can see in this case they'll just choose to pocket the rent.
But there's a different angle. Imagine an apartment building where every apartment is owned. Some of them by elderly, some of them by poor. Now the common areas and house territory would deteriorate, because apartment owners don't have incentive to spend on either one. You could try to roll these charges into their utilities bill, but they will fight tooth and nail. Poor will say "we don't have money for this", elderly will say "we don't care and also don't have money", the rest will say "we're not paying for the aforementioned if they're not".
This is becoming a problem in countries where owned apartments are a thing. The city has to pay from its pocket for the upkeep of territories around such apartment blocks.
Naturally when apartments are rented out, landlord is interested in its state because they have to maintain steady number of new tenants to replace people moving out. Bad upkeep = no more tenants = lost money.