if you're not free to become poor, homeless, and starving, are you really free?

I’d like to learn more about the Soviet housing system. From my very limited knowledge it seems to be one of the few sectors of the economy that actually functioned reasonably well. But maybe I’m missing something.

"functioned" is the key word there. No elevators, terrible insulation, no air conditioning, tiny radiators for heating, small living space for entire families, and infested with bugs. Of course some American apartment buildings check all those boxes too, but it's naïve to assume that soviet apartments were great places to live
- I add that "cannot be evicted" is a double edge sword here. Since appartments were free and were assigned more or less random (cough, cough, corruption), very often you got one or two ... let's say "interresting" neighbours
  Edit: well some interresting facts from my mom who's sitting next to me - there were quite some downsides
  My father asked for an appartment and the answer was: get married. As a single guy you won't get anything.
  Also when you get married and have children, there's no guarantee that you get some big appartment. Her colleague had 3 children, a husband and got 1 room appartment anyway
  There was a list of people waiting for appartments. When you were somewhere down, you wait, for years
  When she asked for an apparartment as a married woman, a "commission" arrived to verify, whether we as a familly really need one. And whether we couldn't stay living with grandma
  When my grandma with my mom moved into a newly built appartment, they opened a window and it fell off. My grandad caught it thankfully so it didn't break. They never openned that window again. There was no one to repair it and a replacement was basically impossible. They were able to open it again in like 2010 when she changed windows
- It is worth considering the circumstances in which they were built, though - much of the worst of the classic eastern European "commie blocks" were basically just a desperate attempt to build something that would house people after WW2 flattened half of the continent. Throw in decades of under-maintenance for good measure.
- I mean shitty housing is better than no housing. Their setup comes out looking pretty good compared to a lot of places nowadays. But far from perfect as you point out.
- i don't think the soviets are a great example of how to do things but homeless people lack those things too. well i guess you don't need elevators to live on the street anyway so that's one thing you won't have to worry about.
  of course they should have amenities. there's no dichotomy here. you can make housing comfortable and free.
- I know little about Russia, but a quote from earlier this year from a Russian:
  Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, responded to Beglov's remarks, saying in a Telegram post that "a quarter of Russians do not have centralized sewerage," citing data from Rosstat, Russia's state statistics service.
  "And basically, it is hard to imagine something more gender-neutral than a backyard 'latrine'-style toilet," he added.
  For context: In response to criticizing gender neutral toilets in Ukraine (I don't know if they mean individual/private unisex bathrooms, or actual group restrooms they think are trans bathrooms, it's not the point of this discussion anyways).
Low rent means no money for maintenance
the elevators where frequently out of order or vandalized
instead of a private washing machine you would have a number of them in the basement (maybe 1 for every 5 flats?), and a week plan with timeslots when you can use them. This is nice as long as all machines are working, but the same problem as with elevators applies here.
it's not a quiet place, you could always hear people going up and down the stairs. The light switch Relais in the cabinet on each level always made a very loud "clunk" when someone turned on the lights...
Well, when you keep reducing the demand, it's a bit easier to do.
- Funny but despite famines, purges, wars, etc. their population generally grew quite a bit during the Soviet era. So I don’t think that was a major factor.

What parts of the (former) communist world have fruit trees? Around Odessa, you can probably live off of fruit taken from people's yards. In St. Petersburg, there are also abundant fruit trees, in the sense that acorns are the fruit of an oak tree.

Near my house in central Europe there's a bunch of walnut trees.
People go pick then up in fall.
Walnuts smell really nice when they're fresh off the tree :)
How about swimming pools?

I'd love to see anyone arguing that American apartments are good.

Another fabricated argument to get mad at. Stay classy 😎

You criticizing anyone for fabricated arguments to get mad at is pretty fucking funny.

for everyone going "oooh but this wasn't true in communist countries!!"

this is basically how it works in sweden, you get an effectively free apartment if you can't afford one on your own (you get welfare to afford the rent), you basically cannot be evicted unless you run a siren 24/7 and shit off the balcony onto people's heads, commie block-style areas tend to have at least some green space with at least a fruit tree or two, and rent in this kind of older housing is generally so cheap that when americans learn about it they just weep.

Spoken like someone who's never lived in a Soviet apartment. f'ing lol.

There's just nothing quite as bleak as that same falling apart brutalist concrete block after block after block after block.

From first hand experience I can tell you all the romance of communal living goes right out the window when they shut down the centrally heated water for the summer for "maintenance" because if you shut it down in the winter, you're f'ed.

All that "to every man as he needs" fantasy isn't real life. All my fire escapes had rusted off from the 3rd floor up to the 10th. So good luck with that in an emergency lol (major Russian City center on the Volga in 2009). Two things can be bad at the same time. Just because the US has a massive social safety net dysfunction, doesn't mean the CCCP was kind to its citizens.

People can suck everywhere.