Napier has the highest social housing waitlist per capita in the country.
Roughly half of Napier's motels are full with people in emergency housing (File image). Photo: RNZ / Luke McPake
Amid the art deco beauty and the picturesque seaside, there are tougher, darker problems simmering under the surface.
Homeless man Rydell sees this every night, once he chooses where to sleep.
At the beach or by a building are some of his choices.
Rydell said he found rough living hard going.
"[It's] pretty bad, pretty bad but at least you've got a blanket over you so the rain won't wet you in the middle of the night."
But often, even the blanket disappeared and he was left with nothing in the pouring rain.
"You get cold, your blankets get taken off you, your clothes get taken off you, that's what's been happening to me."
Rydell is just one of hundreds of people in Napier struggling to find a place to call home.
The latest figures show there are 741 applicants on the city's social housing waitlist, the highest per capita in the country.
Roughly half of the city's motels are full with people in emergency housing.
Mayor Kirsten Wise said Napier's story was "a tale of two cities".
Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise. Photo: RNZ / Anusha Bradley
"There's probably a perception throughout the country that Napier's quite an affluent city and we don't have these social issues," she said.
"Where the reality is, we do have some of the most challenging social issues out of any town or city in the country."
Emerge is an organisation helping people in emergency housing to find a more permanent place to stay. Housing operations manager Moana Paul said recent changes to the Residential Tenancies Act brought some problems.
Landlords have to meet healthy homes standards. But instead of upgrading, she said they were selling up and kicking tenants out.
"At the moment, we are finding a lot of [the need] is off the back of the changes to the RTA and as that slows down, we'll see that it will be the other social needs - the anti-social behaviours, the complex mental health issues that people present with that mean they can't sustain tenancies."
Whatever It Takes also works in this space. General manager Shirley Lammas said some of the people she helped were immediately ruled out by landlords, because of their mental health and addiction problems.
Whatever it Takes (from left) business and finance manager Phil Ross, general manager Shirley Lammas, housing portfolio manager Janine Jensen, and emergency, transitional and acting housing portfolio manager Tony Fuemana. Photo: RNZ / Tom Kitchin
"There's quite a high level of discrimination, so on the open market whenever our people turn up in the queue for housing, we're generally last on the list for that particular property."
Ready to Rent is a programme trying to help with the crisis - funded by Hawke's Bay District Health Board and run by Budget First.
But Budget First manager Kristal Leach said while it helped people gain confidence, the number actually getting rentals was low because the homes were not there.
Budget First manager Kristal Leach says there’s not enough rentals in the market for people. Photo: RNZ / Tom Kitchin
"There's just no private rentals out there now or if there are, they're just unaffordable even with an accommodation supplement. So that conversion rate has really dropped. It's hard and it's often hard for the clients and the whānau sitting in the room, and they're asking the questions 'where are the private rentals?' and there just isn't any."
Hastings, Napier's twin city in Hawke's Bay, is working with the government to build 200 houses by the end of the year under a new approach by the government.
These will be a mixture of public housing, papakāinga, and affordable housing.
Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise admitted her city had some way to go, but said work was underway.
"We are trailing behind Hastings in this regard, so we'll be tapping into all the work they've already undertaken. What we've already started is a spatial planning project ourselves."
This would determine whether there will be space in the future for more homes or high density developments.
Burgers galore for the homeless in Napier as part of lunch at the outreach centre, which is provided three days a week and run by Whatever it Takes. Photo: RNZ / Tom Kitchin
One iwi-led initiative is K3 Kahungunu Property.
It is taking small steps at the moment - only two houses in Maraenui, one of Napier's most deprived suburbs, are on their list to be built.
But the big plan is to build 200-plus homes for whānau.
Spokesperson Aayden Clarke said the homes had to be good.
"It's extremely important to us that we are creating homes that are desirable to live in for whānau, that I want to live in. We don't want to build Coronation St and we also don't want to be dropping boxes into back yards, so that won't be happening, not part of K3 kaupapa anyway."
In a statement, Kāinga Ora eastern North Island regional director Naomi Whitewood said since 2019, the agency had built about 30 homes in Napier and 80 more were at different stages of development.
Under the government's public housing plan, Kāinga Ora expected to build 250 homes across the city by 2024.
For Dylan, who lived in his car, one of these homes could be a dream.
"Yeah, it'll be good to have a roof and four walls around you."