We Need a War Effort to Save Lives—Not More Lies About Housing

 We Need a War Effort to Save Lives—Not More Lies About Housing

By Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita

I wasn’t sure I should write this. It hurts too much. But then again, not writing it hurts more.

Victoria’s Pandora Avenue is being called “unhousable.” The streets are full of people slumped over, minds unraveling from fentanyl, hearts broken by grief, poverty, and trauma. I don’t live there, but I’ve read the stories. My kid goes there sometimes. I think they’re okay. I hope they are.

But this isn’t just about Victoria. It’s not just Pandora. It’s everywhere.

We are losing a war, and pretending it’s not a war at all.

We need mobile M.A.S.H. units—teams that can respond like it’s a battlefield. People who can show up fast when someone’s overdosing, slumped on the street, slipping away. We need a number to call—not the police, but real help. We need stabilization centers where people can safely detox—not for a weekend, but for as long as it takes to stop the worst pain.

Then we need to feed them, assess their mental health, help them start over—and give them hope.

They call them "unhousable." But most are people who got hurt in too many ways. Grief. Trauma. Violence. Accidents. Brain injuries. Chronic stress. And now? Fentanyl is literally eating their brains. The science is showing lasting neurological damage in survivors.

We need to talk about what happens next—not just saving lives today, but supporting a whole generation of people who will live with serious, long-term challenges.

Where is the plan for that?

The system calls it a housing crisis, but the truth is there’s no crisis for developers, investors, and billion-dollar nonprofits. There's just a crisis for us.

They tell us housing is being built, but it’s barely enough. A lot of it isn’t for people already here who are struggling. And when it does get built, it's a lottery ticket. Meanwhile, people are dying outside empty condos.

I’m 63, and I’m trying to hang on just 1.5 more years—to 65—when maybe I’ll finally be able to breathe a little. To have my own space. To write. To rest.
Some days, I honestly wonder: Will I even make it?

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I don’t have all the answers. But I know what doesn’t work:

• Blaming the poor.
• Letting people die in the streets.
• Pretending tiny pilot projects are enough while a public health catastrophe unfolds in front of us.

If we really cared, we’d treat this like what it is:
A war on the forgotten.
And we’d show up with the courage and compassion to fight for them.

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🙏🏽 If you’re reading this and you feel the same—please share it. Write your own. Speak up.
We can't survive this alone. But we might just survive it together.

this city has no soul left.

We’ve Stopped Screaming — And That’s the Real Crisis

By Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita

I saw a headline today that made my stomach turn.
"Vancouver mother presses Park Board for fence near elementary school."

And I thought — wait. A fence? Not a shelter. Not support. Not safety. A fence?

Then I read further and felt my heart break.

"She believes an 8-year-old shouldn’t have to walk past a dead body to get to math class — something she says happened last week."
— CTV News

That’s where we are now. Not just as a city, but as a society. An 8-year-old walked past a dead body on the way to school. And instead of collective outrage, grief, and immediate calls for action, the response is: build a fence.

So we don’t have to see it.

This is the kind of numbness I wrote about just last week. We are becoming what New York became during its hardest days — not because people are suffering, but because no one is screaming anymore. We've stopped demanding real change. We walk past the suffering. We walk past the deaths. We build fences so our children don’t see — but what are we teaching them?

That if someone dies on the street, we look the other way? That the solution to crisis is to hide it? That it's okay for someone’s son, daughter, mother, or friend to pass away in public and be treated like an inconvenience?

God forbid it had been her child 10 or 15 years from now. God forbid it’s any of ours.

We need to wake up.

People experiencing homelessness and addiction are human beings. Their lives are not less valuable because they're on the margins. Their deaths are not acceptable casualties of the housing crisis, the poisoned drug supply, or broken social systems.

We cannot fence away this pain. We cannot parent our kids through this with just compassion alone. We need justice, housing, treatment, dignity, and truth.

If we keep covering it up instead of healing it, this city has no soul left.

We should not be debating fencing.
We should be screaming for help — not for ourselves, but for every person we've walked past, every body we’ve ignored, and every system that let this happen.