It's a 15-minute drive between River Oaks Pl and Dryden Rd and there's close to a million dollar difference in property values.

Dryden Rd is one one of Hamilton's poorest streets. It's tough. The colour of your hoodie will start a fight. Big mamas and bros sit smoking on steps, dogs bark from behind tatty fences - the kind you don't put a hand out to. Residents stop talking and watch if an unknown car drives by. There are few gardens, empty booze bottles on windowsills, empty pantries, doors wide open with nothing to steal inside, sheets for curtains, and all of the lawns are mowed. It's tired, but pride exists.

"People leave their houses here to go and live on the streets," says Ephesians Matekohi, Maori Party voter, who has lived in Dryden Rd for 20 years. She says some of the people round these ways are one step away from a sleeping bag under the bridge.

Tenants - most of them are - say it's not uncommon to watch kids walk to school barefoot in winter.

"There are a lot of people round here who keep their kids home two or three days a week, because they haven't got lunches," says Isobel Ramaka, 59, Labour voter, who has lived in Dryden Rd for 22 years. Her hand hovers constantly over broken teeth. She's a widow, a beneficiary and a Housing New Zealand tenant who clears $162 a week after rent and manages to save $10. "I wanna get a new lounge suite. It's gonna take me a while, but that's all right." She's got $340 saved so far.

Ramaka doesn't know anyone who is rich. "But good on those people for having money, I guess."

PUKETE POSH: Home to taxpayers and retired taxpayers, people who drive flash cars with well groomed gardens around their big homes.

River Oaks is behind security gates. It's home to taxpayers and retired taxpayers, the kind of people who drive shiny cars slowly down the street and notice if the neighbour's garden needs doing. Many bought here for the view to the river and the generous-sized sections, most of which are swallowed up by houses so big you'd bust a gut to get from one end to the other.

One guy says his mansion is worth "between two and three" million and calls it a "humble house". The neighbourhood has giant garden sculptures and statues everywhere, European cars in garages, fancy doorbells and intercoms, pretty pets, and mowed lawns. Real estate agents fizz over houses on the street, selling them for close to a million, plus.

"We've been talking a lot about this getting money for the poor," says Julie, no last name, with a worried expression, whose back fence is covered in National Party endorsements. "I know a lot of people are genuinely struggling and trying. Other people, you'll give an extra $20 to a week and it will go on cigarettes and alcohol."

Russell Mann is a 48-year-old business man with three kids at Southwell and a big house in River Oaks Pl. The front steps to his place are engulfed in a giant water feature. He likes what the National Government is doing with the economy.

"I do sorta believe that you've got to fix the economy before you help the lower level. It sorta worries me - all this talk of helping the lower level - we'll be in more debt again."

Guy Smith leans on his fence in Dryden Rd, hands in his hoodie pockets. "Poverty?" he says. "I've grown up in it. We all grew up that way.

"When I grew up, I had shit, I had nothing, home wasn't the place to go - it was go home and get a hiding."

He dropped out of school early and had a long history with Work and Income, but now he's working in transport management, pulling minimum wage. He has trouble reading and writing ("but I have ears"). He's 26, a non voter, and has fathered one child every year since he turned 20.

"I want my kids to go further than me, to go somewhere, somewhere other than here." He says there are about 100 people in his family network - just about all are beneficiaries and only one has a driver licence. Education, he says, is the most important thing.

"Kids round here are not having enough school. If they don't have enough school they school themselves into crime and stuff and they steal stuff, steal stuff to eat. That's all they know."

Guy Smith laughs at the idea of mixing with with rich people. "They're over there and we're over here. Over there by the river is million dollar houses. Over here is where you'll see the gangs." Rich people, "they clever, they're on to it. They didn't get all that money for nothing".

When Val Jones, centre voter, moved to River Oaks Pl, she hated the security gates. She's a special needs teacher and her husband is a property consultant and their house is so big it has an intercom out front. She says she thinks a lot about inequality in Hamilton ("I hate seeing homeless people in Garden Place, it's horrible") and she works with families that face challenges which people in her neighbourhood could not comprehend. "There's an isolation around here," she says. "In this street, anyway."

Jones' neighbour Sue Lane, National voter, says that good economic management is the underlying solution to a myriad issues. It's not as simple, she says, as a growing gap between the rich and the poor. "I get a bit frustrated. You can't solve the problem by throwing money at it, it's the whole social responsibility thing, it's all very complex." But she agrees, between River Oaks Pl and Dryden Rd, "it's a world away."

HOW THEY RATE

■ Median rating valuation River Oaks Place: $1,050,000

■ Median rating valuation Dryden Road: $185,000

■ Google says the two streets are 8.6 kilometres apart or just 15 minutes' drive