I've been renting for the last 10 years, the house I'm in now is estimated to be worth $300,000. My rent payment is 2500.
2500 x 10 x 12 = coincidentally, $300,000 exactly, that I'll never see again.
So someone who owns an equivalent home for the same amount of time, if it were to suddenly have the value plummet to $0, would still come out ahead of me because they'd only be losing the equity they've put into their home. And that's still not a fair comparison, because there's almost no way it'd become utterly worthless, so they'd still be left with something to show for it even if it loses a significant percentage of its value.
Housing is a basic human need for survival, to be 100% honest I don't feel that bad that the people that have been willfully participating in a system that only works by screwing other people over may lose some money when the people getting screwed over have had enough and try to change things.