You rent housing. Basic inn rooms in the villages start at 5 sp per week. Larger, more desirable rooms and free-standing houses in central city zones are much more expensive, costing gold at the least, some of them platinum.
All classes are needed in parties. In months of beta, I was never once in a situation where we needed more DPS and turned down summoner for a sorcerer, or a bard for a predator. Nor did people turn away druids for clerics or shaman, or crusaders for warriors. All classes and subclassess are capable of performing their archetypical roles well.