Ten Years Later: When the Right to Housing Still Feels Like a Dream

 Ten Years Later: When the Right to Housing Still Feels Like a Dream

(A follow-up to “Article 25: Right to an Adequate Standard of Living” by Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita)

https://tinawinterlik.blogspot.com/2015/11/article-25-right-to-adequate-standard.html?m=1

Ten years ago, I wrote about Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — the right to an adequate standard of living. I wrote with hope that awareness, compassion, and the law might create change. That hope feels like a luxury now.

The city declared housing a right. A bold statement, one that made headlines. Yet the reality on the streets, in low-income housing, and in the lives of people struggling to survive feels like the opposite. Homes are fewer. Rents are higher. Vulnerable people are pushed further to the margins. The system that promised dignity and security has failed, and it keeps failing.

The Promise vs. the Reality

Words on paper are not walls, roofs, or heat in the winter. Declarations of rights are not homes you can walk into. Ten years later, I still see families in shelters, seniors in unsafe apartments, and people forced into tents or couch-surfing just to stay alive. The “right to housing” is now a headline, not a lifeline.

Living the Struggle

For those of us who have lived the struggle firsthand, it’s exhausting, heartbreaking, and isolating. The bureaucracy, the waitlists, the endless forms — it’s like a maze with no exit. And every year, it feels like the walls are closing in. Poverty is not a personal failure; it’s a societal one. Yet the stigma is still ours to carry.

The Illusion of Progress

Government programs talk about “affordable housing” while developers turn neighborhoods into luxury playgrounds. Evictions rise. Social assistance barely covers rent. Policies meant to protect are hollow words without teeth. Declarations without action are cruel mirrors: they show what could be, while reflecting what will never be unless we fight.

What Human Dignity Really Means

Housing is not just a roof over your head. It’s safety, peace of mind, stability, and belonging. Article 25 promised this. Ten years later, that promise is more urgent than ever. And the question remains: how can a society call itself just when so many cannot live with dignity?

Call to Conscience

We cannot accept words as action. We cannot allow promises to replace reality. Ten years later, I write not just to record failure, but to demand awareness and courage — for ourselves and the generations who will inherit the city we leave behind.

“Ten years later, I’m still waiting for Canada to honor Article 25 — not as a slogan, but as a lived reality for every person who calls this land home.”

housing crisis, human rights, Article 25, social justice, homelessness, affordable housing, poverty, Vancouver, Canada, dignity