You don't, it's just low income housing you rent. Comparing it to owning a house is of course quite silly.

Speaking as a landlord, it's even sillier than you say. My agent explicitly refuses to deal with people on housing benefits, because "it's too difficult to get the money out of the government".

I think this is bad for everyone. Poor people for obvious reasons, and everyone else because even when it works it drives up rents and by extension house prices, with the extra money going to people like me (and I left the UK).

I think the UK government should be building more council houses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_house

Your rent is paid for by the government. It’s called housing benefit in the UK. You can receive up to £20,000 a year in benefits which is equivalent to about £32,000 in pre-tax salary.

That overstates the benefit somewhat. Housing benefit is capped at the lowest third of local market rates, and further capped at £20,000/yr.

So a single person reliant on benefits will at best be able to live in shared accommodation. Larger families in more expensive locations (e.g. most of London) would not have their rent fully covered. A single bedroom flat in the cheaper parts of London rents for about £15,000/yr.