Sounds as convoluted as McDonalds Corp business model...

Yeah except McDonalds owns the valuable real estate and pushes off the occupational and downturn risk to the franchisees. The WeWork business model is literally the exact opposite of this. If things go well their landlord makes a windfall on the appreciation. If there's a sharp downturn they're stuck with the lease and no members.

The business model has the potential to be obviously and severely problematic, which is the topic of this post.

If I'm not mistaken, WeWork owns a number of the buildings in which they have offices. Not sure what the percentage is.

It may have changed very recently I suppose, but with that caveat aside I believe you are, in fact, mistaken. The business model for the company has always been lease arbitrage. There was discussion at one point[0] of them having a related entity to purchase real estate, but I'm not sure what came from that, and even in that plan it was to be a separate investment vehicle, not the VC backed company being discussed here.

[0]https://therealdeal.com/2016/10/14/wework-wants-to-become-a-...

I heard, from someone who works for WeWork, that they do own at least some of the WeWork buildings in Manhattan. Admittedly it was a low level employee, so he could have been mistaken.