Again they're loans not lease obligations - different.
You can sublease or assign your obligations in a lease, typically you can't assign a loan in the same way.
Edit:
To clarify, when the average household talks about their family debt, they don't include the future lease payments that they're liable to pay over the remaining term of their family home's lease in their calculation - that is (rightfully) an expense, not a liability.
They do think about their mortgage though in terms of net worth and debt position.
Actually I was replying to your previous claim that "owe" "is used colloquially to mean currently in arrears/default". Colloquially "owe" means "in debt". According to the dictionary "to be under obligation to pay or repay". To what extent other liabilities (leases, pension fund obligations, whatever) can be assimilated to loans is a different question.
You're right that only WeWork appears in the news in these terms, but WeWork is an unusual case. I would be interested to know if there are other companies in a similar situation.
Gotcha, sorry - I guess you're right, doesn't mean immediately due, or past due, I just don't think of leases as owing, just a commitment to pay, which might be splitting hairs.
In the linked article of this thread though, and a few others I've read specifically about WeWork, it feels like it is used to imply a currently due debt that they can't pay, mostly for dramatic effect I imagine.
Someone else had some comments in another part of this thread about other companies with large plant/equipment leases receiving similar commentary, such as expensive data centers.
You can sublease or assign your obligations in a lease, typically you can't assign a loan in the same way.
Edit:
To clarify, when the average household talks about their family debt, they don't include the future lease payments that they're liable to pay over the remaining term of their family home's lease in their calculation - that is (rightfully) an expense, not a liability.
They do think about their mortgage though in terms of net worth and debt position.