When a pregnant 23-year-old Elaina Short goes for 'a piddle” in the dead of night, she crunches her way across the frost to an outhouse, where windows have blown in, the roof leaks and there are gaping holes in the walls.

'I will not bring my new baby home to this,” she declares. That is non-negotiable.

Elaina Short, with her husband Dave and their three-year-old Alyisha. Photo by Bruce Barnard.

And there's sympathy from hubby Dave. 'It's primitive,” he says of the toilet.

And it's only marginally better in what makes do as a family home.

The Shorts subsist in a rented, 15-foot caravan where a tiny fan heater is fighting and losing the battle against the damp and the chill.

They want a state house. They desperately need a state house. They are the faces of the Tauranga emergency housing crisis.

'We are on the waiting list,” says Elaina. They say they registered with Housing New Zealand four months ago.

'We check each week,” she adds, 'but we've been told it'll be six months to a year.” So the 'unplanned new baby” that is due early next year might have to come home to the cold and damp of the rented caravan after all.

Unemployed Dave's a bit shamefaced and tugs deeply on another ‘rollie'. 'It's bloody stressful not being able to provide for your family,” he admits.

And what about wee ‘Bubba', three-year-old Alyisha who's a ‘dead-ringer' for her Mum? 'It's sad because she hasn't known anything different,” says Dave.

What Alyisha is familiar with are continuous colds. 'She's getting more and more sick,” says her Mum.

Alyisha's also familiar with being cramped in the caravan for days with her parents when it rains. 'She hates it,” adds Elaina. 'There are tantrums and I hate seeing her angry.”

And Alyisha's also familiar with meat and vegetables just once a week. It was baked beans and bread again last night. Dad had noodles. That's standard.

'She's regressed,” says Elaina. 'We almost had her toilet-trained.”

Elaina has her own health issues. She's anaemic. 'But the baby is doing fine,” she adds.

The Short's $80-a-week rented caravan is parked up on $120-a-week Maori land in Bethlehem – it's littered with caravans, piles of junk, broken buildings and broken dreams.

And just to ram home the indignity, on the skyline just over the paddocks is a quite different demographic – the full employment, warm fires, full larders and affluence of the Bethlehem Bible belt.

They are the ‘haves' – but it is quite different for the ‘have nots' like the Shorts. And while she might not have much, Elaine has pride and determination 'I'm not moving again unless it's into a house,” she says.

When SunLive drops by the Short's caravan it's the middle of the day and curtains are drawn – perhaps against the cold, perhaps for privacy.

A ginger moggy is parked on top of the microwave. Tidiness and cleanliness don't seem to be a priority. They have bigger issues.

'We are not sitting on our arses,” reassures Dave.

They applied for five private rentals yesterday, they are on the books of several letting agencies and they have looked through 20 to 25 properties since having their Greerton rental home sold from under them three months ago.

'We just get the old ‘don't call us, we will call you' line,” says Dave. 'We are being ignored.” So they ended up in a caravan.

They just don't percolate to the top of the waiting lists and they don't understand why. 'Probably because we're low-earners,” he admits.

But they do understand why.

There's a history with substance abuse, they dabbled in ‘everything' – him with drugs and her with alcohol – but they insist it's just that, a history.

There's Dave's stint in prison. 'A long time ago,” he says. He's a discharged bankrupt and acknowledges 'there's been some bad financial management”.

And one day their child went missing for a time. It doesn't read well.

But, he wonders, should it preclude his family from having a roof over its head – should it preclude them from the basic comforts like warmth and security?

'Now we are trying to do things the right way, but everything seems to be conspiring against us,” he adds.

The Shorts survive on benefits, which means once they have paid for the caravan and the site – and the last couple of payments on their now unregistered and unwarranted car – they have about $60 a week for food.

'I've been on bended knee and begged like a pauper for food grants,” says Dave. 'We have used up our annual $300 allocation.” And it's only July.

The 48-year-old's work career has been a seasonal one. But he's now doing a forestry course, which he hopes might turn a decent hourly rate by the end of the year.

And his wife, who is 25 years his junior, has just started an introductory course in social work. She'd be coming from first-hand experience.

In the meantime they remain positive. 'God will answer our prayers,” says Elaina. 'After all, he provided this caravan when we needed it.”

Perhaps this family needs more than divine providence right now. Perhaps they need some more earthly assistance.

Because how tragic and pathetic, how desperate do you have to be before you're accepted for a state house? SunLive will explore this story further next week.