Housing Out of reach for Young Canadians

Young Canadian professionals are taking to social networking site Twitter to air their despair at the overpriced Vancouver housing market, trending the line “I don’t have a million dollars!”
 
For policy professor Paul Kershaw, the social media campaign on real estate investing in Vancouver still merits attention, particularly the #Don’thave1million hashtag.
 
“I think we are at a sea change moment," UBC’s School of Population Health Kershaw said in CBC report.
 
"It's not that they don't have a million bucks — it's that they can't afford to live where they grew up."
 
One of the supporters of the “hashtag revolution” was Eveline Xia, a 29-year-old who has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She said most of her peers “spent years pursuing post-secondary education only to watch the supposed reward of home ownership slip out of reach.”
 
Alongside Xia are communications consultants, engineers and registered respiratory therapists who have all picked up the torch, CBC said.
 
From 1976 to 1980, Kershaw's calculated that a 25- to 34-year-old who made median full-time earnings only had to work five years in order to save a 20 per cent down payment for a house.
 
But from 2006 to 2010, that number had dramatically jumped to 10.1 years, he said.
 
"My heart just weeps at the thought of calculating Vancouver," Kershaw says. "Because it's probably closer to 20 years."
 
Sociologist Nathan Lauster, also part of  UBC, dubbed it as the "intergenerational drama of urban house ownership as a life goal."
 
"It produces this sensation for a lot of people like you're trying to make a home on quicksand," Lauster was quoted as saying by CBC.
 
"So you're trying to do everything that you think is right, everything that your parents have done, and it's still not going to be enough."
 
The report added that recently in Vancouver, homebuyers seem to be after a perfect home, as they tear “down old stock to build new mansions, ripping rather than renovating.”
 

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