Rent and house prices have been on the increase at the same time that Hamilton City Council has discussed selling off its pensioner housing stock and the Government has said it will sell hundreds of state houses in Hamilton.
And now the Prime Minister wants Aucklanders to move here to make the problem worse, without a plan to provide affordable housing.
He expects them to live in Hamilton and work in Auckland, but his Government has actively blocked the establishment of a commuter train service between Hamilton to Auckland to get people safely and efficiently to work each day.
A 2011 working party report into establishing such a rail service showed it would be cost effective, in high demand and could be provided for less than $10 a year more in rates payments.
A local survey commissioned by the working party showed that 85 per cent of Hamiltonians approved of that rate increase to establish a commuter train service.
The survey also showed that 11 per cent of Hamiltonians were travelling to Auckland at least once a week - many were travelling daily.
On current population data, that means 15,000 Hamiltonians already travelling to Auckland and back every week. It is obvious that at least 96 of them would fill a carriage in a train to Auckland if it was provided.
The beauty of travelling by train is passengers get to avoid peak hour congestion; they therefore have more certainty of arrival time, arrive less fatigued, can work or rest on the train, don't have any parking fees to pay and cause less damage to the environment. Everyone is a winner.
Despite this, the regional council's working party report was not acted on because the Government won't pay its share of the cost.
The 2011 proposal would cost just under $1m in a one-off cost to upgrade and build stations along the route, plus just over $1m in annual operating costs.
The annual cost would be split between passengers paying $24 one way; ratepayers paying less than $10 per year and the remaining third to be met by the Government.
That's a tiny proportion of the money being spent on the Waikato Expressway, which gets us to Auckland a little faster, only to sit in growing peak-hour congestion for longer and longer periods.
Why won't the Government act?