There's an element of rental housing which is an act of pure consumption. Real estate taxes (either paid or foregone), maintenance supplies, maintenance labor, common area utilities, paying the bond used to build the building, insurance, etc.

Plus, there is a notion in the article that this would be an incoming-producing asset and that income is presumably coming from the rents paid. Unless this is a massive Ponzi scheme, there's consumption going on (and therefore you're not building equity with all of the rent payments).

There's no realistic way you're going to have 100% (and likely not even 50%) of a rental payment going to building equity.