I've seen a ton of people make that mistake, though. I think it's because what you write is accurate - "refs are meant for values that don't need to trigger a rerender" - but most people think of refs (or at least refs of DOM elements, which for many people are the only refs they ever use) as just a way to access a DOM element. They expect it to just be a DOM element in a normal variable.
I'm not sure if there is a less confusing way of doing it, but it's damn confusing.
I'm not sure if there is a less confusing way of doing it, but it's damn confusing.