I think it's good if you have a home where people can meet and gather, but many times, that is not ideal, especially for anyone who is in a lower socio-economic class, or has significant family members or roommates there. Having people come over is a whole thing of "playing host" or "entertaining guests" which means that you might need to clean up some, you're going to offer food and beverages, you may need to determine a program of entertainment, whether it's movies or cards or conversation. That's a burden, and it can drain the host's resources.
Someone's home is also non-neutral territory. It's guests coming into someone's owned living space. That creates a unique dynamic.
The reason third spaces are popular is because none of those burdens apply. The restaurant, or coffeehouse plays host to us, so the cleanup is on them, the menu is theirs, and we know the bounds of activities that can be done. Third spaces are neutral spaces; none of us live there, and we are all essentially "guests" on the same footing, so it's comfortable, especially if a man and woman are alone together, the third space is a public meeting place where things are much less likely to get weird.
For decades, especially while I was homeless and living on the streets, I enjoyed third spaces with my friends. We were safe and climate-controlled in the coffeehouse, and we had hours of diversion while we played card games. Street urchins and our church friends would come and go as they pleased. We could tank up on beverages or a little pastry. There was a convenient bathroom, and oh, the people-watching potential! We were downtown in a college town, and the nightlife never stopped!
My circle of friends was down to a tight-knit three people, and I was the youngest among them, and we played card and board games right up until the pandemic hit. At that point, our third spaces were all decimated. Our favorite teahouse closed forever. We scattered to the four winds. One of us is just too old to keep going out, and the other lady seems rather paranoid of COVID-19 that she won't do social outings. We really don't have a third space to go, either. Well, there's a little place across the street, with an extraordinarily surly owner and two weird dogs.
Recurring, reliable activities are great. You would always know when to meet us downtown for cards. We would go to evening Mass and then proceed to the coffeehouse, like clockwork. That's important. We could count on getting mostly the same baristas on shift and seeing the same people each time. I thought about advertising on meetup.com or something, you know, just to get some visibility beyond our local circle. But COVID-19 has changed the landscape.