Why settling into my first home felt more like settling

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 butsettling in has felt more like just settling.

When we were finally ready to purchase, the pandemic had entered its second year. Wewere anxious to leave our one-bedroom, 750-square-foot downtown Ottawa apartmentwhere we had been sleeping and working and working out and eating and watchingendless hours of reality television together for the previous 365 days.

Our neighbours on each side seemed fond of their subwoofers. Our living roomsometimes reverberated with the sounds of an all-night rave while our bedroom/homeoffice/home gym shook with each explosion in the seemingly endless Die Hard filmfestival running on the other side of the wall.

Even for two committed urbanites, thespace 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-centurybungalow. We were willing to give up the perks of downtown living but still wanted to bewithin the city proper.

Walkability mattered we had lived car-free for years andpreferred to keep doing so. Some green space even just a patch for our dog and asmall garden would be ideal.

Once we took meetings with mortgage brokers and realtors, the detached, single-familyhome 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 anolder, stacked condominium with all the lacklustre finishes of the rental property which ithad been for years.

Winning the property (there were at least a dozen other bids, andwe paid $140,000 over the intentionally low list price) felt more like submissionto 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.

Butdon'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-sizedspeakers 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 housingmarket 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 cashtransfer from the bank of mom and dad may always be on the other side of the propertywealth gap.

It's less a gap than the kind of gate one finds in tonier neighbourhoods agate now locked.

I was mostly raised by a single mom in a lower-income home, moving between rentalunits of varying quality until I moved out at 19.

It's frustrating to have doneeverything I was told to do go to school, take a good, public sector job for the payrather than my passion and still feel locked out of the rewards the middle class hasalways taken for granted.

• See more Unlocked: Housing stories by young Canadians here.

According to Generation Squeeze, a study out of the University of British Columbia, millennials have had to get more education (andstudent debt) to snag lower-paying and more precarious jobs than our boomer parentsenjoyed, and all to compete for house prices that continue to skyrocket as salariesstagnate.

My husband and I both have good jobs and excellent credit and still can'tcompete.

Perhaps hope is the greatest victim of the real estate market. Lately, I've found myselfasking: if I can never afford to buy a detached, single-family house, how will I measuremy success?

The combined forces of unchecked speculation, poor urban planning, anddwindling supply thatfuel the housing crisis seem insurmountable, but the crisisprovides 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 NormanRockwell fantasy of suburban bliss mom, dad, two kids, and a dog behind picketfences 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.