Comparing monthly costs is a bit misleading. There are a whole bunch of less-direct costs and benefits to ownership. A bunch of these depend on your estimation of future economic conditions and of your future desires.

1) If you own a house, you're incurring the risk that you have to move for personal or professional reasons, and then can't easily sell. Landlords typically don't have to sell on short notice -- it's perfectly possible to be an absentee landlord. Not an absentee resident.

2) As a landlord, you can potentially hold the house as one asset in a portfolio. As a homeowner, you've locked up a lot of your potential capital in that high-risk illiquid asset; you're much more exposed if property values go down.

On the flip side:

1) Residents with a mortgage get a tax break that landlords don't.

2) Being an owner means you don't have the risk of future rent increases, and can profit if property values go up.

3) Being an owner entitles you to make structural or other changes -- repainting, say -- that a tenant can't easily.