Sure, you could get a piece of land in Siberian tundra at any time, I would not call that housing.

Moving to a city was way more complicated than in capitalist US. You could not simply buy an apartment. You had to be allocated an apartment by the government. And you needed connections for that. Or bribes. Ideally both. If you think your local rabid Republicans do not care for little wage slave men, you never experienced USSR, it was like that but 100x worse.

At least they tried. Our homelessness is an intentional feature of our capitalist system. A constant threat and extant punishment for those among us who aren't fortunate enough to be born with a silver stick up our ass.

Well, I'm from a post-USSR country and a substantial part of this was the criminalization of homelessness. Can't have homeless people, if you lock them up (be it in a prison or asylum).

Then again, just about anyone, who did not conform to the party's message got locked up. Getting your place bugged at the slightest hint you might be up to something disagreeable and all that good stuff. The secret police could disappear and or beat you up without any real justification.

I hate late-stage capitalism as much as you, but coming from a country that's been through this, I am extremely reluctant to give the rotten and frankly repugnant USSR regime any credit.

This is a trick question, the real answer is that there weren’t real communist countries

Soviet Union? It was uncommon for a family of 6 to live in a small apartment. You can even see it in old soviet movies where apartments would be separated by curtains (common comedy trope).