Kelowna’s North End — breweries, fancy coffee, wine tasting, live music, overdoses — sometimes feels like a city arguing with itself.
A few weeks ago I was housed.
Now I’m carrying most of what I own in reusable bags, trying to figure out bathrooms, bus schedules, insulin supplies, charging cables, where to sit without being moved along, and whether I can physically keep doing this for very long.
Kelowna’s North End sometimes feels like several different cities stacked on top of each other.
Warehouse shelters beside breweries.
Cyclists in expensive commuter gear riding past ambulance calls.
People carrying Narcan kits walking by wine tastings and patio string lights.
Exhausted shelter residents sitting a few blocks away from people discussing neighbourhood safety over tasting flights and charcuterie boards.
At one point I sat near a winery listening to live music while nearby patrons complained about homeless drug users being too close to the area.
Many of them were already gassed deep into wine tastings and craft beer while discussing addiction and disorder happening nearby.
Alcohol intoxication at a winery is treated very differently from intoxication outside a shelter, even when both exist within the same few city blocks.
Same city.
Different consequences.
The strange thing is that not everything about shelter life has been terrible as some might think.
Some of it has actually been unexpectedly human.
That’s the part people often miss.
One minute I’m talking with someone about music, photography, or Bollywood films on the bus. The next minute someone is so intoxicated they can barely stand up without smashing their head on the floor.
One young guy at the shelter arrived absolutely wrecked. For a while he stabilized and actually seemed like a decent kid underneath everything. Later he got extremely high again and could barely stay upright. He repeatedly nearly fell head-first onto the floor.
The staff seemed overwhelmed, busy, exhausted, maybe desensitized. I honestly don’t know.
What stayed with me wasn’t chaos. It was another shelter resident — an older guy, clearly struggling himself — quietly stepping in to help care for him.
He wiped him down, helped reposition him safely in bed, cleaned his shoes with watered-down shelter sanitizer, and tried to make sure he didn’t choke, wander off, or seriously injure himself.
Not professionally. Just humanly.
I barely slept because I kept listening to make sure he was still breathing. I had Narcan beside me the whole night.
That image sits in my head beside another one: cyclists riding past brewery patios in bright morning sun while paramedics worked quietly outside the shelter.
Parallel worlds.
Even though I don’t use drugs myself, I picked up harm reduction supplies and ended up handing out pipes and Narcan to people who needed them. Conversations happen quickly out here. Sometimes people just want someone to stop and talk to them like they still exist.
There have been awkward moments too.
One interaction shifted suddenly after alcohol, stress, exhaustion, and misunderstandings collided in the way they sometimes do in unstable environments. It was more sad and uncomfortable than dangerous, and honestly just reminded me how fragile people become when they’re already carrying trauma, exhaustion, or fear.
Still, most people I’ve met have not been violent or cruel.
Mostly they’re exhausted.
I’m exhausted too.
And honestly, I’m more tired than when I used to do sixteen-hour physical labour shifts.
Not because I’m doing nothing.
Because every basic human function suddenly becomes work.
Managing diabetes while effectively homeless adds another layer to everything. Refrigeration matters. Timing matters. Bathrooms matter. Keeping insulin pods charged and replaced matters. Low blood sugar becomes more dangerous when you’re already physically depleted and navigating the city all day in a wheelchair.
One night my glucose crashed hard and suddenly. I ended up sitting outside the shelter office flushed, shaky, and scared enough that I warned staff I might need an ambulance if it didn’t come back up. Thankfully it rebounded quickly after eating.
The next morning my insulin pod expired because I hadn’t planned on ending up where I was.
That’s the strange thing about homelessness:
you can survive a potentially dangerous low blood sugar event one night and then spend the next morning trying to figure out where to charge your phone, refill medications, find a bathroom, and sit somewhere long enough to rest your hands without being moved along.
The reality is that basic things become strategic calculations very fast when you’re unhoused:
Where can I safely charge devices?
Where can I use a washroom?
How much water can I drink if bathrooms are inaccessible?
Will food spoil in the heat?
Can my hands physically keep pushing my wheelchair all day?
Can I make it back before losing my bed?
There are no hiking backpacks or expensive travel kits here. It’s Dollarama bags, Walmart bags, reusable grocery bags, backpacks with broken zippers, and whatever people can physically carry.
One morning after buying coffee and trying to figure out buses, rides, bathrooms, and where I was supposed to go next, I sat outside for a while simply to rest because pushing a wheelchair while carrying your life around all day is physically exhausting.
A security guard eventually told me I couldn’t sit there.
Not because I was intoxicated or causing problems. I was just visibly tired and visibly homeless.
Earlier that same morning I’d had a surprisingly good conversation with an undercover police officer carrying silver sidearms and a woman working at the coffee shop nearby.
That’s another strange thing about all this.
The city keeps functioning around you while your own life quietly destabilizes.
There have also been moments of genuine connection.
One afternoon I met a sporty woman from Salmon Arm while trying to find a room I was supposed to view.
She was young, maybe half my age, with ponytails, bright eyes, and an easy calmness about her. She had arthritis and had recently undergone a hip replacement, and walked with the slight swagger of someone still learning to trust a rebuilt joint again.
The viewing itself turned out to be a misunderstanding.
The room was actually intended for a female international student, and everyone involved slowly realized wires had been crossed somewhere in the conversation. It wasn’t hostile. Just awkward and disappointing.
Still, we talked for quite a while afterward. Before leaving, I offered her my number and suggested maybe grabbing coffee sometime. She smiled, took my number, and headed off down the sidewalk.
Another reminder that even in the middle of all this, ordinary human moments still happen.
There are also the unanswered housing inquiries.
Messages sent into the void.
No replies.
No callbacks.
No clear path forward.
You begin to wonder whether housing instability changes how people respond to you before they even know you.
At one point I realized I didn’t even care that I was using my ex-girlfriend’s deodorant.
I just wanted to feel clean, human, and maybe even smell nice for once instead of like stress, sweat, transit, and exhaustion.
That sounds like such a small thing until basic comfort disappears.
Then suddenly clean clothes, soap, deodorant, hot food, and a quiet place to sit stop feeling ordinary and start feeling almost emotional.
I’ve also experienced moments of real kindness.
An old relationship unexpectedly became a temporary refuge for a couple nights. A hot bath. Laundry. Quiet. Real food. Conversation. Human closeness. Space to stop moving for a while.
As I write this, I’m laying in a soaker tub eating from a veggie tray, trying to let my hands stop hurting long enough to think clearly again.
A contrast to the pasta and soup which weren’t fancy but shelter dining.
But after days of carrying everything, surviving minute-to-minute, and sleeping lightly, sitting down to hot food at a table honestly felt emotional.
She’s struggling too. Chronic pain, nerve compression, physiotherapy, exhaustion from full-time work. Everyone seems to be carrying something right now.
At one point I ended up explaining AI prompting strategies from a bathtub because her workplace had introduced AI tools without really teaching staff how to guide them properly. Even sitting in the middle of all this instability, I somehow still ended up troubleshooting workflows and talking about prompt engineering.
That felt absurdly normal.
That’s another thing people misunderstand.
When you lose housing, you don’t instantly stop being yourself.
You still notice strange public art. You still flirt with people you meet on buses. You still talk about movies and music and photography. You still laugh. You still try to help friends buy phones. You still try to contribute something meaningful to the people around you.
You just do all of it while carrying a constant background calculation about survival.
And honestly, I don’t know what happens next.
I’m trying to stay optimistic. I’m trying to keep writing. I’m trying to document things accurately without turning people into caricatures or tragedy props.
Because the truth is more complicated than that.
It’s not just despair here.
It’s exhaustion, absurdity, humanity, conflict, care, confusion, hunger, warmth, trauma, dark humour, physical pain, and people trying very hard not to completely fall apart.
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