I apologize if this is insensitive in some way but I genuinely am hoping to understand and learn. Why is allowing families to buy a home they otherwise can not afford a positive thing?

If a family can not afford a house then they can choose not to own a house. I can understand the point of increasing access to affordable housing, but allowing more people to buy homes seems to have the opposite effect.

I think you assume, and rightfully so based on how people discuss this topic, that 'afford' is a black and white numbers game when it comes to mortgages. It's not. I can clearly 'afford' a home mortgage worth the amount I spend in rent each month, but I cannot get a mortgage for that right now. So really the discussion is/was/should be about easing the mortgage qualifications and restrictions. It was not as if people were giving mortgages for million dollar homes to minimum wage workers, and no one would sanely suggest that is a good idea.

The other side is renting -- where the landlord can raise rents to almost any arbitrary level (well to the market rate, but if you're not making bank it might as well be arbitrary). My understanding is 5-year ARMs where also subject to the whims of the bond market (LIBOR or whatever), so really the difference between renting and mortgaging in this case are just semantics.

I'm curious about your situation. Can you provide additional financial information? Price of the home, area of the country, salary at date of purchase.

I'm wondering why this was downvoted - I'm really curious, too. In particular, what they mean by "first getting started", and whether "home" means a house or something like an apartment/condo.

From my perspective they skipped a step or two and some of the difficulty came from that. I started by renting an apartment with a friend and saved up enough for a down-payment on a normal loan in a condo over two years. It's been five more years since then, and only now would I consider a house (though don't really want to move yet).