An “Occupy Vancouver” protest drew more than 2,000 people recently. Those gathered were protesting financial inequality.
A lack of affordable housing seemed to be the root cause of the demonstrations that day. The protesters called for a complete shift in the social fabric of the metropolis.
It is rather daunting to see how much debt young people must take on these days in order to purchase a home. The cost of real estate in Vancouver and other large Canadian cities puts home ownership far out of reach for most young people.
It seems, however, the concept of the “starter home” has become obsolete and many first-time homebuyers are in search of their dream home instead of a fixer-upper.
I have a theory about that, and also why many adult children seem to live longer at home with their parents or move back in when times get tough.
My observation is, what do they have to aspire to? When I was a teenager, my dream was to live in a place with a flush toilet. And in the “be careful what you wish for” department I now live in one with four. My children grew up in the house with four bathrooms. It’s difficult for them to shoot for something lesser when they shop around for their own homes.
The house my husband and I live in now wasn’t our first. That house was less than 1,000 square feet. It was an RTM. My husband was his own sub-contractor, arranging for basement construction and other site preparation. It came to us as a shell, with drywall wiring and some plumbing completed. We finished the inside as we could afford the materials. At one point we lived for several months without closet doors. We had the doors, we were just burned out from the project.
It’s called “sweat equity” and that investment of our leisure time paid off. By the time we made the transfer from Watrous to the Battlefords that mortgage was nearly paid off and we could shoot a little higher with our second home.
So yes, I’m sounding like the old codger saying, “back in the day,” but I do think young people have higher expectations about what kind of home they want to live in. And if they are able to obtain the funds they need to purchase the home they want, they work extremely hard to pay off that debt. Just like my husband and I worked on that RTM week after week, month after month.
I don’t think the current generation has it any harder than we did. We just approached it from a different perspective. And I’m not going to use that “sense of entitlement” phrase to describe their perspective either. I think that’s unfair to an extremely creative, hardworking, forward-looking and environmentally-conscious generation. They are going to do great things for our country, but they are going to have to go deep into financial holes in order to live where they want to live.
