Before the space as we know it, which was added in 2010, hangars were the means of travel to CP and CND. There was no actual flying in space, no space at all - you would enter someone's hangar, sit inside the static model of a ship inside it, and watch an animation, and then you were at the destination. Basically an elaborate private teleporter. Here's how it looked from the outside, but it also was just an animation, no ship was actually going anywhere. The people inside hangar would just disappear and appear inside the "CND" instance.
When the actual space was created, every hangar owner got them a privateer, a fully functional spaceship. But the old hangars also doubled as estates, houses. To compensate for that function, they also got the current "hangars" which are just houses, nothing else. Some argue that privateers don't provide the ability to board it from a planet, but for that every hangar owner also got unlimited Space Thruster, so they go to space and back without any additional cost, and then teleport to their ship from space station. Yes, it means additional steps but the whole space thing got immensely bigger than before. When you grow up, you tend to do more steps, you see.
The mistake that MA made was to make the compensative estates look like space hangars, retaining the perceived connection between them and spaceships, which raised the expectations and demands for an actual functional connection (like privateers landing into them). That never was the idea, and it's awkward to still hear it being pushed for15 years later. Most hangars aren't even owned by the ships owners anymore, but are hoarded by "investors" who are most vocal in lobbying the functionality ideas, for instant 10x profit on their investment.