Gentrification Took Everything: My Family Built Homes, Now There's Nothing Left
I was born and grew up in Surrey, Hope, Fraser Valley, my mom and kid were born in Vancouver and raised here. My Grandma made Sunday dinners and my dad had a hobby farm.
It’s surreal to see what it’s become.
I’ve always known it was getting bad — all the luxury towers, all the unaffordable homes — but the new Chapman University report hit me like a punch in the gut. It confirmed what so many of us already feel deep inside:
Vancouver isn’t just unaffordable… it’s “impossibly unaffordable.”
It’s now the 4th most unaffordable city in the world, behind only Hong Kong, Sydney, and San Jose. They compare median home prices to median incomes. In Vancouver, the average person would have to save every dollar for over 11 years — no food, no rent, nothing — just to buy a basic home.
My Family Literally Built Homes
My grandparents bought a corner lot at Ross and 51st for around $3000. That wasn’t some investment — it was a piece of land to build their home. Not contractors. They built it themselves.
Later, my dad built a little house with bay windows. I even found it once in the BC Archives. Then we moved to Surrey where he bought land for a hobby farm and built another house. That land? It’s now Hawthorne Park.
He moved us again to Dogwood Valley, outside of Hope. He built a garage, an A-frame for the campground, and brought in a mobile home when the café we were supposed to live in leaked. There were cabins too. He was always creating something for his family to live in. A place to call home.
And Then It Was All Gone
After my dad passed, my grandma sold the house they built to help my mom buy a lot to move that same mobile home. Later, she upgraded to a new double-wide. But in time, things got messed up.
My sister convinced my mom to buy a condo. It came with high taxes and high strata fees — and my mom was living on disability. It was hard on her. Really hard.
Eventually, she had to sell. There was no land. No house. Nothing left to pass down.
Just a little cash — split four ways. And that’s it. A family that once owned land, built homes with their hands, worked the soil, grew food, raised kids — now has nothing to show for it.
This Is What Gentrification Looks Like
It’s not just luxury towers and glass condos. It’s families being erased from their own stories. It’s working-class people pushed out, shut out, and left out.
It happened to my family. And I know it’s happened to thousands of others.
We didn’t lose our homes because we were lazy or irresponsible. We lost them because of a system that put profits over people, and let foreign investors and developers reshape our city into something unrecognizable.
I Want My City Back
Vancouver was once a place where a regular family could build a life — and even a home — with their own hands. Now, it’s a playground for the rich.
This is why I speak up. This is why I write. This is why I won’t stay quiet.
If you’ve lost your family home, your roots, your community — know that you’re not alone. And your story matters.
They turned Vancouver into Hong Kong. But they can’t take our truth.
— Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita
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