Vancouver, We’re Struggling — And No One Seems to Notice

Vancouver, We’re Struggling — And No One Seems to Notice

Lately, life in Vancouver feels impossible. Grocery prices are outrageous, shelves are often empty, and even customer service feels gone. $100 used to fill a cart — now $50 barely gets a few items. On my way home, I saw tents in False Creek, more people just trying to survive in a city that seems to have forgotten them.

It’s not about blaming anyone who comes here or works in these stores — they’re dealing with the same pressures we are. The problem is the system itself. Policies that allow new families to arrive without ensuring there’s housing, jobs, or community support for people already here are leaving both locals and newcomers struggling. Social assistance, affordable housing, and decent-paying jobs are scarce. The cost of living has skyrocketed, but the support system hasn’t kept up.

Why are some families able to bring relatives while our own families can’t get help? It’s not a question of fairness — it’s a question of priorities. Governments have chosen growth, immigration, and economic numbers over the people already living here. And in the meantime, everyday life has become a fight for survival.

It’s heartbreaking, frustrating, and exhausting. But maybe the first step is asking the hard questions:

• How did we get here?
• Who benefits from the system as it is?
• And most importantly — what can we do to make life better for everyone living in this city?

We can’t just blame people — we have to face the system that’s creating these struggles and start demanding real change.

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The Irony of Compensation vs. Compassion

 The Irony of Compensation vs. Compassion: CEOs vs. Unhoused People in Vancouver

What CEOs of Non-Profits and Social Service Agencies Receive:

• CEO salaries in large BC non-profits often range between $150,000 to over $300,000/year.
• Some executives in major housing or homelessness organizations have reported salaries exceeding $200,000 annually.
• These leaders are paid handsomely to “manage” and “solve” homelessness and poverty — overseeing millions in budgets, grants, and public funds.
• They enjoy stable, well-resourced offices, benefits, pensions, and prestige.

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What People Experiencing Homelessness or Housing Insecurity Get:

• On Income Assistance, individuals receive approximately $1,060/month (basic needs + shelter allowance).
• Rent for a room in an SRO or cheap shared housing can be $500–$700/month or more, often exceeding assistance limits.
• Many must live in unsafe, unsanitary, overcrowded conditions, or outdoors in tents or shelters.
• They face social stigma, discrimination, and criminalization for “choosing” homelessness, despite systemic barriers.
• Public perception often dehumanizes or blames them, implying they don’t “deserve” more support.

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The Stark Contrast:

Aspect	CEOs of Social Service Agencies	Homeless/Unhoused Individuals
Annual Income	$150,000 – $300,000+	~$12,000 per year (social assistance)
Housing Situation	Comfortable, stable, often owned or leased	SROs, shelters, tents, or street homelessness
Access to Healthcare	Full benefits and employer-provided plans	Limited access; often rely on emergency care
Public Perception	Respected leaders, “experts”	Marginalized, blamed for their situation
Ability to Save/Plan	Yes, with disposable income	Almost impossible with current assistance levels

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Why Is This a Problem?

• It reflects systemic discrimination and misplaced priorities: society rewards those who manage poverty with wealth, while punishing those who experience it with neglect.
• It fuels social inequality by allowing wealth accumulation at the top while basic survival remains out of reach for many.
• It perpetuates stereotypes that homeless people are “lazy” or “undeserving,” ignoring the structural causes like lack of affordable housing and inadequate assistance.
• It undermines trust in the social support system, since those in power appear disconnected from lived realities.

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What People Say:

“CEOs are making more than twice what a doctor makes, yet people who are literally living in tents can’t get rent assistance to cover a room. How is that justice?” — Advocacy group spokesperson
“If social services really cared, the money would go to people, not to executive paychecks.” — Former unhoused resident

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Conclusion:

There’s a deep irony and injustice in a system that compensates executives so highly for addressing homelessness while the unhoused struggle daily with inadequate resources, discrimination, and invisibility. Real change demands both reinvesting funds to support those in need and rethinking how leadership is compensated in the social services sector to align with community values and equity.

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Tomorrow Morning: The Leveling

 Here's a little a vivid dystopian-utopian hybrid—a dream that starts with collapse but blooms into something far better.

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✨ Tomorrow Morning: The Leveling

I wake to a silence I haven’t heard in years. No rumbling garbage trucks, no hum of traffic. Outside my window, the street is full—but not with cars. It’s people. Marching, singing, holding signs that simply read: ENOUGH.

The strike had started a week ago, a whisper in the underground channels:
Don’t work. Don’t buy. Don’t comply.

By dawn today, the whisper was a roar. Every office tower stood empty. Supermarket shelves, guarded for decades by profit, were unlocked and left for people to take what they needed—no more, no less. City Hall’s glass doors were open too, but no one was inside. The “leaders” had fled, their bank accounts meaningless now that no one would serve them for money.

And here was the strangest thing: no chaos.

Neighbours who barely spoke before were knocking on each other’s doors, organizing food shares, swapping blankets, pooling skills. The internet still worked, but instead of ads and clickbait, people were streaming lessons: how to grow food in a bucket, how to build a solar panel from scrap, how to fix a bike.

A council formed, not from elections but from volunteers—gardeners, teachers, mechanics, elders, parents—people the community trusted. Their first decree was simple: Every person will be paid the same. No rent, no mortgages. Housing is a right. Everyone gets what we used to call “minimum wage,” but now it’s more than enough, because rent has fallen to zero and food is shared.

Former CEOs were in the streets too, in jeans and hoodies, planting seedlings, learning to swing hammers, not because they had to but because they had finally realized their survival depended on everyone else’s. The police weren’t gone, exactly—but the role had shifted to community safety, walking alongside neighbours instead of patrolling against them.

Mother Earth began to breathe again. Without the constant churn of factories making useless things, the air tasted fresher by the week. Migratory birds returned early, confused but welcome. Kids played in the streets, their laughter echoing off buildings that had once been luxury condos, now homes for families.

It was not communism, not socialism, not capitalism. It was something unnamed, something new—built on the idea that we belong to the Earth, not the other way around.

I leaned out my window and saw a chalk message scrawled on the pavement below:

We are not free until all of us are free.

For the first time in my life, I believed it.