(And again, I do agree that housing is incredibly overpriced in much of the world, it's just that debt vs not doesn't have much to do with it. The high price of mortgages is the same reason the rent is high, and the rent being too high is a problem even if it doesn't involve debt)
Personally going bankrupt means you're now facing the possibility of actually being homeless on the streets.
> housing is incredibly overpriced in much of the world
There's a difference between having money and earning money. If you find $20, are you therefore $20 more deserving? If you are mugged and the thief gets $100, does that make you $100 less deserving?
There are plenty of people who have lots of money through no good deed, and plenty who have little through no evil deed, and I think confusing monetary holdings with morality is a very poor road to go down.
I agree that "meant to have" and "deserve" are the wrong concepts here. But reality and practicality are what they are.
If I work hard and save my earnings, with the intention to buy something which we agree is a "valid" need/want (whatever that something is), and then lose the money through some circumstance that we we agree is "not my fault", that really sucks and I don't claim that it affects how much I "deserve" the thing (whatever deserve means), but the reality is that I now don't have the money to buy that thing. Am I going to now borrow money because "I worked hard and I deserve it"? Some would, others wouldn't.
You're thinking of debt as a consumer. Like, take a personal loan or credit card debt and buy a big screen TV. Yes, that's dumb.
Not all debt is like that. Picture this scenario: Your bank pays 5% interest on deposits. You're offered a loan from somewhere for an interest rate of 4.9%. It is a no-brainer to take that loan, go into debt, for as much as possible! Deposit it into your bank account and profit each month. If the rates change such that the bank pays less, just pay off the loan.
Now, sure, that's a simplistic scenario since nobody will offer you a loan for less than the banks are paying interest right now. But with time being another variable, you can manouver yourself into that situation. Right now my bank pays more interest than the percentage I pay on my mortgage balance. I'm literally making money every month by having debt. It would be very dumb to pay off that mortgage debt even though I have the cash to do so.
However, the most basic clean-and-functional versions of basic necessities (food, water, shelter, and transportation) should be accessible to everyone working a full-time job, in my opinion, without having to spend other peoples' money.
3 out of those 4 are attainable even with a low-paying job, it's really just shelter that is the problem.