Why settling into my first home felt more like settling
Kevin Shaw | for CBC News | Posted: March 28, 2022 8:00 AM | Last Updated: March 28, 2022
Kevin Shaw writes about millennials' impossible housing choices and rethinking milestones
One year after my husband and I purchased our first home, I don't feel relief but defeat.
It's not buyer's remorse, exactly — we bought the best we could in a bad market — but settling in has felt more like just settling.
When we were finally ready to purchase, the pandemic had entered its second year. We were anxious to leave our one-bedroom, 750-square-foot downtown Ottawa apartment where we had been sleeping and working and working out and eating and watching endless hours of reality television together for the previous 365 days.
Our neighbours on each side seemed fond of their subwoofers. Our living room sometimes reverberated with the sounds of an all-night rave while our bedroom/home office/home gym shook with each explosion in the seemingly endless Die Hard film festival running on the other side of the wall.
Even for two committed urbanites, the space and quiet of the suburbs beckoned.
Unfortunately, our dream home was downsized before we even started house hunting.
Our initial goal was modest, we believed: a two or three-bedroom mid-century bungalow. We were willing to give up the perks of downtown living but still wanted to be within the city proper.
Walkability mattered — we had lived car-free for years and preferred to keep doing so. Some green space — even just a patch — for our dog and a small garden would be ideal.
Once we took meetings with mortgage brokers and realtors, the detached, single-family home in the city became a semi-detached beyond the Greenbelt, and then a freehold townhouse, and then a condominium townhouse, and so on until we ended up in an older, stacked condominium with all the lacklustre finishes of the rental property which it had been for years.
Winning the property (there were at least a dozen other bids, and we paid $140,000 over the intentionally low list price) felt more like submission to a brutal market than a triumph.
We followed the now ubiquitous real estate wisdom to "drive until you qualify," which meant we've traded in our transit passes for car keys.
But don't cry for me and our condo just yet. Thankfully, there's a beautiful dog park nearby, and the suburban set doesn't seem as fond of looping EDM through refrigerator-sized speakers until four in the morning.
Our dream home was downsized before we even started house hunting. - Kevin Shaw
While I'm grateful — truly — to own anything at all, I've become embittered by a housing market that has revealed meritocracy as a myth only the wealthy can afford to spoon-feed their kids. First-time homebuyers without equity, large savings, or a huge cash transfer from the bank of mom and dad may always be on the other side of the property wealth gap.
It's less a gap than the kind of gate one finds in tonier neighbourhoods — a gate now locked.
I was mostly raised by a single mom in a lower-income home, moving between rental units of varying quality until I moved out at 19.
It's frustrating to have done everything I was told to do — go to school, take a good, public sector job for the pay rather than my passion — and still feel locked out of the rewards the middle class has always taken for granted.
According to Generation Squeeze, a study out of the University of British Columbia, millennials have had to get more education (and student debt) to snag lower-paying and more precarious jobs than our boomer parents enjoyed, and all to compete for house prices that continue to skyrocket as salaries stagnate.
My husband and I both have good jobs and excellent credit and still can't compete.
Perhaps hope is the greatest victim of the real estate market. Lately, I've found myself asking: if I can never afford to buy a detached, single-family house, how will I measure my success?
The combined forces of unchecked speculation, poor urban planning, and dwindling supply that fuel the housing crisis seem insurmountable, but the crisis provides an opportunity for re-envisioning our communities.
- We used AI to measure Canada's urban sprawl
- High housing prices may push middle class out of market, PBO warns
- Housing for all in Toronto is possible say urban planning experts
My husband and I have had to redefine what marriage and family values mean to us, even if that means casting aside the vision of the nuclear family.
From the Norman Rockwell fantasy of suburban bliss — mom, dad, two kids, and a dog behind picket fences — all we've kept is the dog.
Perhaps we can learn to let go of the picket fences, too.
This story is part of Unlocked: Housing stories by young Canadians, 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. You can read more stories here.