Unlocked: An inside look at where 20 young Canadians live today

Two international students at UBC in Vancouver live in a camper van. A young family in rural Saskatchewan bought an affordable but very old farmhouse to fix up. A woman in Calgary is living in that city's first shipping container laneway home.

Young Canadians across the country are getting creative when it comes to housing. 

These stories, and 11 more, are at the heart of Unlocked, a new personal storytelling series by gen Zers and millennials across Canada in collaboration with CBC Creator Network. Forty-two storytellers from B.C. to Nova Scotia produced short films and personal essays, each offering an intimate, first-person look at their generation's housing situation. 

The series comes at a time when many Canadians are grappling with a tightening rental market, and rising housing prices. 

In the last decade, Canada has been losing affordable rental units, those available to individuals making $30,000 a year or less, far faster than new ones are being built, a recent CBC Fifth Estate investigation found. 

And in last week's new federal budget, dubbed the "housing budget," the government announced several measures they promise will cool the Canada's red-hot housing market. Some aren't so sure. "There's a lot of smoke and mirrors here," said David Hulchanski, a housing and community development professor at the University of Toronto, told CBC News. 

Meanwhile, young Canadians, gen Zers and millennials are still in that housing pinch. But just how bad is it for young adults finding places to live within their means? What challenges do they face? Will they ever own a home? Maybe they already do, or don't want to. These questions were at the heart of the personal stories in Unlocked. 

Check out all the Unlocked projects below.

VIDEO: 3 roommates, 2 cats, no privacy: A gen Zers affordable housing solution in Winnipeg 

VIDEO: Camper van a reasonable alternative to sky-high Vancouver housing prices, say two international students 

VIDEO: Then and now: Just how affordable are Montreal apartments?

VIDEO: Meet a B.C. nomad living offthe grid on a solar-powered catamaran

VIDEO: The housing that rap built: How growing up in Ottawa community housing influenced rapper Lindasson 

VIDEO: How I made my dream home a reality as a 24-year-old single woman in Dartmouth

VIDEO: From 40K in debt to condo owner: Advice from a millennial who dug themself out

ESSAY: The pros and cons of moving to small-town Nova Scotia during the pandemic

VIDEO: From trash to treasure: Young couple restores abandoned Saskatchewan farmhouse  

VIDEO: A sea can to call home: Laneway home the first of its kind in Calgary

VIDEO: 'I asked [owner] if he was transphobic and he said yes': Trans renter says safety is key to good housing

AUDIO ESSAY: Why settling into our first home felt more like settling

VIDEO: Young and homeless in Toronto: Filmmaker sheds light on housing crisis

Unlocked: Housing stories by young Canadians is a national storytelling series by the CBC Creator Network. These personal stories, produced primarily by gen Zers and millennials, reveal the challenges young Canadians face finding affordable housing, their creative solutions and their hopes for the future. Check out the website here.