Debbie Munroe is one of those rare characters who stays calm in chaos and who notices that person at the back of the room, locks eyes and asks them what they need.
She often has a line of people out the door, yet she seems to always have the compassion to listen to everyone and the presence to remember their names.
If someone needs an aerial for their television, they come and see Debbie.
If they need a food parcel to make it through the week, they come and see Debbie.
And if they have nowhere to sleep and are driving around with their life packed into a station wagon, at some point, they will be told "go and see Debbie".
It took no time for the ABC to be sent her way and once inside the drop-in centre she calls the "Waka of Caring", it's immediately apparent why this sliding door on a strip mall is so iconic.
A waka is a traditional Māori canoe. So, for Debbie, it's a perfect metaphor: everyone in, everyone afloat.
The waka is in South Auckland, a part of New Zealand where homelessness is an entrenched problem at crisis levels.
Debbie has been working on the front line for 10 years, but just more than three years ago she decided to move the waka out of her home and into this shopfront.
It's a full-time volunteer deal where the line between those who need assistance and those who make donations sometimes does not really exist.
It's a goodwill system.
Everything in the waka is free — food, clothing, blankets, pots, pans, books, tampons, nappies.
About 150 food parcels a day are given out, no questions asked: The only requirement is a smile and a brief moment of connection so Debbie can be satisfied the recipient is OK.
The food parcels are made up of donations that just seem to appear.
It's an organised chaos that hums along on the generosity of those who can afford to donate and the determination and reputation of Debbie.
"It's a bit scary, hey, knowing that if we weren't here how would everyone cope?" she said.
"I don't care what anyone says, homelessness in New Zealand is getting worse."
New Zealand has the highest homelessness rate per capita in the OECD and a decades-long housing crisis that puts a secure place to live out of reach for many low-income Kiwis.
Homelessness is an issue around the world but, in New Zealand, it is highly political, especially since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pledged to tackle the crisis.
The number of people living in their cars is climbing
The structural issues pre-date Ardern by decades and, with COVID-19, came a widening gap of inequality.
New Zealand's opposition has taken the opportunity to criticise the government for its failure to address a key issue that Ms Ardern raised while campaigning for the top job in 2017: the number of people living in their cars.
When someone applies for public housing in New Zealand, they are asked about their current circumstances.
In June 2017, there were 93 people who reported living in their car but, just five years later, in June 2022, that number was recorded as 477.
Minister for Housing Megan Woods said New Zealand would "only solve a homelessness crisis if we have an honest conversation about it".
"If someone comes into [the department of] Work and Income now and identifies that they are in their car, we do not have any limits on access to emergency accommodation," she told the ABC.
"Every effort is made to get that person into emergency or transitional housing, as a pathway to getting into more permanent housing."
The Labour government's overarching strategy on housing is to build more public homes.
However, to get people off the streets quickly, there is a grant system that sees motel, hotel and boarding house operators paid to house New Zealanders seeking emergency accommodation.
Ebony Gray told the ABC she did try to live in an emergency boarding house but did not feel safe.
The 30-year-old said there was little privacy, with strangers pushing into toilet cubicles and banging on her door in the night, so now Ebony spends each night in the back of her car, a small space that is at least her own.
"I was renting a place a few months ago, which pretty much left me with nothing for food," she said.
"With emergency housing, it's really unsafe and I was in a lodge where I was sexually assaulted, so I'd rather be safe in my car."
Driving around Auckland, it is easy to spot the motels and hotels that have become emergency accommodation, with a security guard often stationed out the front.
Recently, the Ministry for Social Development released figures showing the government had now spent more than $1 billion on emergency rooms in hotels and motels.
The ABC spoke to several people who had made the choice not to return to these places, including one young man who was 15 when he was first living on the streets.
When COVID-19 shut New Zealand down, Tyler, whose last name has not been used due to privacy concerns, was moved into a series of emergency hotels.
"To be honest, I felt like I was unsafe. Because there were heaps of gang members and people that were smoking drugs … so I took off from the motel and went back on the streets. I just didn't want to be there," he said.
Dr Woods said emergency housing was a "stop-gap measure".
"Look, I don't want anybody having to make their home a motel, that is not a permanent place where people should have to call home, but nor do I want anyone sleeping on the street or sleeping in their car," she said.
"Certainly our long-term aim is to get out of motels, to have enough permanent transitional housing."
Dr Woods said when Labour came into office in 2017, there were around 1,500 transitional housing places, and "there are now over 5,000".
Ram-raid crime increases
Right now, New Zealand's housing crisis is colliding with inflation above 7 per cent and the squeeze on some families is immense.
Some commentators are calling it a "cost-of-living crisis".
In the New Zealand equivalent of Woolworths, butter is pushing $10 a tub and milk is more than $8 for three litres: this in a country where there are more dairy cows than people.
More New Zealanders are being forced to ask for help to feed their families and it's food banks that are seeing more working people come through their doors.
Dave Letele runs BBM, one of the largest food-share operations in Auckland, and has seen the change first-hand.
"It's the different types of people [who] have been coming in," he said.
"The reason why we're busier is because we've got middle-class, working-class, working-poor, they're all being pushed down. There is no more margin for life."
Dave said he has been asked for help by firefighters, construction workers and electricians.
"It's hard turning people away, so you never want to do that. We understand if people can't get food, what else might they do," he said.
"If you look at your kids and they're starving, I think any parent would go and do whatever needed to be done."
According to NZ Police crime statistics, the incidence of theft and related offences has been trending upwards since before COVID-19, and it's in the Auckland and nearby Waikato regions where the increases have been among the highest in the country.
One type of theft that has been attracting a lot of media attention in New Zealand is ram raids.
Every few days, new CCTV videos are published showing cars ramming through storefronts as part of high-stakes thefts that often leave small business owners with hefty clean-up bills.
NZ Police say this type of crime is not new, but documents released under the Official Information Act show ram raids increased by more than 500 per cent between 2017-18 and 2021-22.
For New Zealanders, there was promise of transformation when Jacinda Ardern came into office in 2017 but, as crime and inequality increases, the reality of the structural issues is becoming increasingly stark.
New Zealand's 'underbelly'
The country will head to a federal election next year and there is some commentary that Ms Ardern could be in for a fight, given the current cost-of-living pressures on Kiwis.
Brand Ardern enjoys popularity on the world stage but, after five years in office, there are questions about how much the Prime Minister has been able to move the dial on issues she made promises about, including housing and poverty.
"But Ardern, because of the status that she created, and absolutely leveraged and in both 2017 and 2020 has become really personally identified with these things," Massey University professor of politics Richard Shaw said.
"And there are people who feel as if the relationship has gone a little sour."
Professor Shaw said the pandemic and soaring inflation had created a complex set of circumstances that meant some of New Zealand's long-standing inequalities were being exposed.
"Those are long-standing issues, those are issues that go back 30 or 40 or 50 years. They're part of the underbelly of this country that … gets talked about here, to a point, but it rarely gets represented offshore," he said.
For Debbie and Dave, who live each day with a keen awareness of the homelessness crisis and the increasing need, they mostly try to stay apolitical, but insist the onus is on everyone in power to cut red tape and get funding to organisations having an impact right now.
Because, as debates about long-term solutions carry on, more New Zealand families are living day-to-day, surviving on short-term supplies.
"Once upon a time it was only [welfare] beneficiaries would be coming in for food, but that's not the case anymore. Working whānau [extended family members] are coming in because they just do not have enough money to eat, and that's wrong," Debbie said.
The no-fuss, no-frills style of Waka for Caring is perhaps how it manages to get so much done. Debbie seems allergic to bureaucracy and anything that could become a barrier between her and the people she looks after.
She says the Waka just sees a "need and we fill it, in our own special way".
"And I'm just one Māori girl with no shoes on."
