The property owner is well within their rights despite Melissa being a good tenant.
That's the problem.
No one has done anything wrong yet we have a situation where a family face a stressful Christmas and paying more rent at best and sleeping in a car at worst.
The latter is unlikely to happen yet but it is a warning of what will ultimately happen if Whanganui doesn't recognise this as a symptom and start confronting an obvious problem.
We can celebrate an upswing in the district's economy with its increase in jobs, in population and house prices.
Many, if not most, will reap the benefits of more money, people and activity flooding into the city.
But the assertion that everyone is better off with Whanganui's rapid turnaround is clearly not true, at least in the short term.
The flipside to fast growth is the growing pains which manifests as housing costs and population rising faster than wages and the creation of jobs and housing.
There's always people cast aside to make way.
There's a lot for Whanganui to be excited about and no one wants to the district to return to the economic doldrums of previous decades.
But the effort needs to be put into managing the fallout from that as much as celebrating what a success it is for some.
