I agree. The issue with housing isn't that it's so limited, it's that there are incentives to want a house beyond simply wanting a house for its own sake.
Personal housing was a mistake and apartments should've filled that purpose, except we got monkeys pawed on that and ended up with some crap that can't do 90% of the things you'd want a house for in the first place.

tl;dr: Put anything that you'd want a house for into either Apartments or Island Sanctuary. Keep housing's primary purpose as a social space for FCs (And maybe linkshells, if there's some way of making that work?)