I don't specifically have any reason to try and defend the point of the article, but it sounds kind of fun anyway. Really I think the article is taking aim at the notion that buying a home and holding it will mean the owner makes money, though it doesn't specifically say this.
I believe if you were to ask somebody who was looking to buy a house 20 years ago they would actually be convinced it was a good way to invest. At least I've had multiple people of older generations tell me this. Why though? I believe that was because of the increase in value of homes in the coastal USA post-WW2 [1]. Home values grew quite substantially between the 1950-2000. I believe that since people were forced to consistently pay into a mortgage to own the home, it forced people to put money into a fixed asset consistently. I suspect it was billed as some kind of weird saving or investment strategy because of that.
So yeah, you're absolutely right. But I do think that's what this article and conversations around this point generally are aiming at but forget to mention.
[1]: https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/valu...
Even from that perspective the article manages to miss a critically important point. Nobody buys a house as an investment and leaves it empty until they sell it. They buy it and rent it out, so any analysis that leaves out rental income is a bit of a joke.