I think some people prefer a state not to provide these things, but I don't understand why.

It's not that we prefer them, it's that states have a horrible track record doing this. What if the state gave you (mostly) clean water (it's kinda brown and you boil it "just in case"), a simple 4 wall shack in a tract of shacks, and a sack of rice a month. All of your basic needs have been met, but only at the poverty line. Is that really a success? There's two points you need to consider

The state has no disincentive for failure

Businesses fail and cease to exist. People fail and go bankrupt. But the State cannot fail. Indeed, States can maintain failure long after any private solution would have fallen by the wayside.

Take health care. If the State, for instance, takes half your income in taxes and provides "free" health care, most people would say that's good. But what if that system made you wait an average of 20 weeks for necessary care? I once heard someone (in a non-political setting) talk about a dark time in his marriage when his father-in-law had a heart attack. He was treated in Toronto and sent home to await heart surgery... 6 months later. Yet there's no alternatives because Canada has made them all State-based. It's no wonder increasing numbers of Canadians seek treatment in the US.

The problem is that the State has created a distortion in the market. Private pay means you get treatment much quicker, but Private pay also means some people might not get any care at all. Politicians take the latter and rail against it as "unfair". Yet, there's no disincentive for the government to create long wait times for care. Indeed, if the free taxpayer subsidized healthcare actually killed half the patients it treated, there would be an outcry that would simply spark an electoral revolt and the new party in town would pass some minor, and likely meaningless, reforms (I can see the headlines now: "Reforms reduce death rate from 50% to 48%!"). This is the ratchet effect

This can be applied to other topics like

Public Schools

Retirement/Pensions

Public Transit

Scarcity doesn't vanish just because you want it to

Let me go back to the health care thing and explain why it's not all it's cracked up to be. In single payer, only the State can pay for your health care and that money comes from higher taxes. But single payer is a cost control mechanism and cost controls never work in the long run.

Let's say you need an MRI. Under private pay, we'll say an MRI costs $250. MRI companies turn a healthy profit and companies that do them are abundant. Single payer comes along and says that the State (now the only legal payer) will only pay $50 for one (a price ceiling). That's an enforced 80% reduction in the price. The politicians look good for stopping the "greedy" MRI companies, but what happens is that you can now only make a profit if you consolidate. 20% of the payment means 80% of the capacity will leave the market. Companies that did only MRIs will close. Hospitals will stop replacing MRI machines and technicians. And MRI wait times will explode because there's no longer capacity.

TL;DR

The problem is that you can't get around supply, demand and price. There's no an unlimited capacity in any market for any good or service. What you're advocating is removing the price factor. Price ceilings never end well