Of course renting is financially the better choice in the long run. But on the other hand you have to deal with a landlord, and this has a cost (aka they might force you to move out).
If you had money somewhere or gold or whatever after WW2 you probably lost everything, but if your house was razed to the ground in say Warsaw, chances are if you could prove even in a flimsy way (most people lost their paper deeds) you owned it, you got it back later. There's a powerful thing about owning a piece of land that other financial instruments don't have.
The article only used an 8 year home ownership period. If you move every 8 years, then yeah, maybe renting is better because paying closing costs of a mortgage every 8 years adds up, not to mention for the first couple years of a mortgage, 60-70% of the payments are just going to interest.
But if you're going to live in a house for 15+ years, I can't possibly see how renting works out. Even if you invest what you save by renting, rents rise, and eventually the rent will exceed what your fixed mortgage payment would have been had you originally bought, and that money you invested starts to vanish.
And what exactly "dealing with a landlord" means is strongly dependent on the legislation you live in. For instance, when I lived in Germany, I learned that tenants have extremely strong rights (compared to the US) which perhaps partly explains why most people over there rent. (Another explanation is that many people cannot afford to pay for a mortgage...)
One might want to speculate on the future price of the property. So instead of having empty the property they just rent it. This is obvious in the west coast where rent is so much cheaper than monthly payment of a 30yr mortgage.
Other landlords use property to just launder money. So any income is useful.
OP mentions the cost of moving when you get kicked, and perhaps the "anxiety" cost, when you get a message on January 1st, asking if everything is okay, and he is thinking about selling the house...
I think you misinterpreted that comment. "They need to pay their mortgage and make a profit" is meant to by a cynical take on landlords.