Imagine not living long enough to ever afford a house.

You can't by a tear down in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, etc for under a million. Houses rise in value at a rate of about $$1500-2000 a week (for years) while wages have been stagnant for decades. You could have bought a house for 450k-500k in 2005 and sold today for 2 million. I've seen condos that were 175k in 2006 sell for 850k today. You can't even buy a shack out side the city for less than 500k and most are going for over a million or two.

Average price of a house in Toronto will be over 4-5 million in the next decade while the average wage will still be 45-65k.