The cost of home ownership has soared in Canada, with the average home price up 32 per cent from a year ago. Photo by Dillon Kydd / Unsplash When faced with something stressful or frightening, the human body tends to react with the “fight-or-flight response.” COVID-19 has produced any number of threats, but for millions of Canadians, that physiological reaction is being triggered by a more unusual source of late: home ownership. Our national obsession with buying, owning and renovating our homes has become an existential threat to the futures of millions of young Canadians. As prices continue to soar out of reach, those who want to buy are being forced to take on ever-larger debts, and sacrifice ever-increasing portions of their paycheques and budgets, to make the housing math work. And that math is diverting time and money away from other parts of their lives — and other aspects of their futures.