If your mortgage payment is below the going rents (not too difficult to achieve if you factor in the tax write-off), then one way you can look at that is you give an $X down payment now for a free house in 30 years. If you look at it that way, slow growth doesn't look quite so bad -- the house only needs to be worth about $8X the down payment in constant dollars 30 years from now. Assuming 20% down, that's only appreciating 60% in 30 years, which is only assuming about 1.5% growth in home value per year.
Inflation should probably also factor into your analysis, for those who believe that inflation is likely in the long term.
Buying a home also offers a lot of stability on your long-term housing costs. Even if you buy and sell every few years anyway[1], the fact that you are both buying and selling at the same time leads to a fairly even end result. With renting, you are always purchasing on the spot market[2]. Avoiding risk and having control over when you move both have a value.
[1] Of course, buying and selling every few years is very costly, but it doesn't affect the stability argument.
[2] And it's not just luck when you happen to be moving around. If you are buying into an area because of a new employer, there's a good chance that the employer is hiring, and that a lot of people want that same apartment.