Almost half of the population in Tai Rāwhiti doesn't earn enough money to buy or rent a house, according to the Gisborne District Council.
There aren't enough houses in the region either. In fact the housing crisis triggered one family into breaking into an empty state house because they were fed up waiting for a home after living in a single room at a local motel for two and a half years.
The whānau was helped by Manaaki Moves, a collective formed to fight the broken housing system in Gisborne, led by three wāhine Māori who know the housing system all too well.
Manaaki Moves' Leah Jacobs described her own experience of the system: “They give you a contract. It's almost designed to say 'we can come in whenever we like - we know your door code and that's how it will stay' and at the time I was thinking like, yeah, whatever.
No privacy
"Just I wasn't really thinking of how far they would go and they breached our privacy heaps of times. I mean I was sitting in our room breastfeeding my daughter and I hadn't answered the door because I'm busy and they've opened the door themselves."
Manaaki Moves' Hope Jones says the new collective has made "changes and moves in four weeks loud enough to shake up some people that have the jurisdiction to do all of this stuff".
They say their main drive is to give children in emergency housing a chance at life.
They helped a whānau of four break into an empty Kainga Ora house earlier this week as the three wahine said "the system has failed us" but they also described how that felt.
'A palace'
Jacobs said: “It could go two ways - we could get arrested and charged - or we are going to get you a whare and we feel like we're going to get you a where, so it's up to you. We won't do anything without your say so. Boom, done that next morning. We get over there and she had her kids there and her partner and as soon as we got those doors open they just ran around the house…. They just felt free. They looked at it like it was a palace.
"We managed to turn all that pain we felt into the mahi that you see today into love, turn it back into love, because that's basically what got me through everything. It was the love I had for my children, the love a mother has for her children, for her whenua, tangata whenua, whare tangata, all those connections.”
Manaaki Movers is in the process of establishing an official social service organisation so more whānau can be helped.