When Statistics Don’t Match the Streets:

When Statistics Don’t Match the Streets: Why I Question Vancouver’s “Improving” Narrative

By Tina Winterlik (Zipolita)

Recently, CBC published an article suggesting that Vancouver is becoming more affordable and safer. According to the data, rental prices are down, assaults are declining, and overdose deaths are decreasing. On paper, it sounds like a city finally turning a corner.

But I don’t recognize this Vancouver.

I’ve lived here long enough to know what real improvement feels like — and what managed appearances look like. What I see today is not a city healing. It is a city struggling to look better for cameras, investors, and international events like FIFA, while everyday people quietly carry heavier burdens.

Statistics Can Improve While Lives Get Harder

Numbers are not lies — but they are not truth either. They are selections. They depend on what is measured, what is excluded, and who is no longer counted.

If people are displaced out of Vancouver, rental demand drops. If people stop reporting assaults because they no longer trust the system, crime appears lower. If overdose deaths fall because toxic supply shifts, not because treatment and housing improved, the root crisis remains.

Statistics can improve when suffering becomes invisible.

The Vancouver I See

I see seniors choosing between food and rent.

I see working people living in vehicles or sharing overcrowded spaces.

I see artists, caregivers, and community builders leaving the city they once loved.

I see tent clearings framed as solutions.

I see help that is harder to access, not easier.

And I see exhaustion in people’s eyes — not relief.

Optics Matter in Political Storytelling

Mega-events like FIFA change narratives. Cities polish themselves. Language softens. Headlines become hopeful. Declines are celebrated without context.

But improvement for headlines is not the same as improvement for people.

A 14% rent decrease after years of explosive increases does not make housing affordable. A 36% reduction in overdose deaths after record-breaking loss does not mean the crisis is solved.

It means we are measuring decline from catastrophe — not from stability.

Who Benefits From the Narrative?

We must always ask:

Who benefits when a city is described as “improving”?

Developers. Investors. Tourism. Political careers.

And who struggles to be heard?

Renters. People on assistance. People with disabilities. Seniors. Unhoused citizens.

Their stories do not fit neatly into trend lines.

Lived Experience Is Data Too

My perspective is not academic — it is lived. And lived experience is not inferior to statistics. It is the context statistics depend on.

A city is not healed when numbers soften. A city is healed when people feel secure.

We are not there.

Why I Speak Up

I am not writing this to deny hope. I am writing this to protect honesty.

Hope built on selective framing collapses. Hope built on truth can actually change things.

Vancouver deserves better than cosmetic recovery. Its people deserve more than improved charts.

Until everyday life becomes more livable, I will continue to question any headline that tells me everything is getting better — when my community tells me otherwise.

Because cities are not statistics. They are people.