Ms Pyke explains that the region is experiencing a housing crisis, due to the tight, inflated housing market and shortage of rental and social housing.
As a result many people are unable to afford to rent or buy houses, with people sleeping rough or with relatives and elderly pensioners unable to find affordable rental properties.
Ms Pyke goes on to say the most vulnerable are being affected, with the latest Ministry of Social development figures on the social housing register showing a significant increase in the number of people with the highest needs waiting for social housing, just in the past three months.
What I will say is that those ministry figures show a similar comparison to figures I recently learned of at the Hastings District Council, where we have a current waiting list of approximately 70 seniors for our senior social housing, compared with a list of nil just a year or few ago.
Increasingly around Hastings, too, I am seeing vans and buses parked up driveways and used as makeshift bedrooms. Unless something is done, tents will be next.
Socio-demographics and the housing scene is changing and at an increasingly rapid pace throughout New Zealand. The effects of the Auckland situation are being pushed out into the regions.
Recently I watched an episode on the current affairs show Seven Sharp that highlighted how many working professionals in Auckland - our nurses, school teachers, and police - are struggling with affordability and housing costs and are considering leaving because of it.
The problem, if they move to the provinces however, is that they will increasingly place demand upon our housing stock, snapping them up along with the other investors who can no longer afford Auckland stock, thus making it further difficult for our already existing locals to afford homes and rentals.
For example, I was recently speaking to councillor Henare O'Keefe about the housing issue and he told me about a hard-working couple he knows who wished to buy one of the new houses being built in Flaxmere. However, even their budget of close to $400,000 wasn't enough to secure it.
With the base figure of a new home in Flaxmere costing close to half a million dollars you can bet where the rest of the region's housing affordability (or lack of) is going to.
I'm concerned that our professional working class in Hawke's Bay - people with good, solid professional jobs - is fast becoming the working poor, struggling to afford to buy and even rent in many cases.
If this is the case for our working professionals, couples even, what say the future of the rest us and our region?
CHAT is organising a public rally to be held at the Napier Sound Shell at 2pm this Sunday, August 6.
The rally is to raise awareness of the extent and effects of this long-running and worsening housing crisis and to seek positive solutions from the political parties and community.
The tone is positive and proactive. It's on my agenda and invite open for those interested.
*Jacoby Poulain is a Hastings district councillor, a board member of the Hawke's Bay District Health Board and is on the EIT Council.
