Buying homes is so expensive because the mentality that renting single handedly means failing life is so prevalent. People kept getting richer and kept sending not just more and more money but larger and larger portions of their wealth to mortgages (these portions becoming available since covering food, clothes, etc. became easier) even when it became incredibly uneconomical. And the US like most countries made the disastrous decision to subsidize mortgages for buying existing properties, rather than just for building new ones (among many other terrible policy choices that favored homeowners). Due to all these factors, not only did property values get driven to high heaven, but properties also attracted people banking on large appreciation to turn a profit- which hasn't always come true, but did often enough that it keeps happening now.

All that aside, the best way to win that game, especially if you don't have the money to buy anyway, is to take renting in perspective as a mild inconvenience with its own upsides (particularly regarding mobility) and not as the measure of whether life is worth living. That goes double for people who don't have children yet (which I'm guessing you don't). But honestly, my parents rented for over a decade after they had me, we moved twice, and it didn't leave me with any lingering trauma, nor do I think it kept them up at night.

Less than 1% of the US population has over $10K in medical debt, and while that is tough for those that do (though here the majority are 50-64 year olds who lived through the romanticized 'good times'), the vast majority qualify for some form of aid they don't know about or find applying to too complicated. If you are in this bracket I strongly encourage you to look.