A rise in homelessness that has stretched municipal and ecclesiastical authorities' limited resources to deal with the problem has spurred the Ministry of Health to try and find places to house impoverished Greeks.
The majority of the new homeless are not immigrants, drug addicts or the mentally ill - traditional causes for homelessness until now.
The increase is among recently unemployed Greeks who have been hit by some economic hardship and are unable to keep paying their bills, includ Read more

A rise in homelessness that has stretched municipal and ecclesiastical authorities' limited resources to deal with the problem has spurred the Ministry of Health to try and find places to house impoverished Greeks.
The majority of the new homeless are not immigrants, drug addicts or the mentally ill - traditional causes for homelessness until now.
The increase is among recently unemployed Greeks who have been hit by some economic hardship and are unable to keep paying their bills, including entire families. According to the Ministry of Health these "new homeless" are made up of families that have been rendered roofless and jobless due to the economic crisis.
"In the last months we have now added a (new category to the list): what we call the new homeless, in other words citizens who became unemployed, and could not pay their bills, so they were evicted. This is a new profile for Greek society," said Deputy Health Minister Markos Bolaris.
One non governmental organization estimates the homeless in Greece have risen by 25 percent since 2009. The Athens municipality say the number of homeless in the capital alone have risen by some 20 percent since then. There is no official data and government is preparing to document their numbers and prepare a bill to create legislation defining the homeless, as it is something which does not exist in Greece since the phenomenon is relatively recent.
Bolaris said that the number of homeless would be higher if not for the fact that Greek families are very close-knit and many Greeks who might otherwise be on the streets are staying with relatives.
However, others aren't so lucky. During these biting cold winter nights, the municipality is going from street to street handing out blankets to homeless people sleeping on the pavement.
They have few options, as the lack of shelters in Athens and other cities means they have nowhere else to go, and the Ministry of Health is trying to combat this with a temporary plan to collaborate with hotels in Athens to provide beds.
"We are thinking we will have to cooperate with the hoteliers association to supply us with hotels that do not have very much work because of the crisis, or others that are fully furnished but are closed, and could operate with a really low cost to shelter these new homeless people," said Bolaris.
"With this support for a short period of time we can tackle this problem and eliminate it. Because it is a transient problem just like the crisis is transient, and efforts are needed now at this moment when the crisis is at its peak," he added. With government funds being limited due to the debt crisis, the Ministry of Health is looking into creating more permanent shelters with the additional help of private donors and European Union funds, if needed.
But until then, many homeless have to rely on the few shelters that exist, or the street.
The thirteen people living at one shelter run by the church count themselves lucky to have a roof over their heads and a bed to sleep in. One middle-aged man, who did not want to be identified, used to work as a maintenance man, and never worried about money in his life. Until he lost his job two years ago and couldn't find another. When the unemployment benefits ran out, he came to live in the shelter.
Father Ignatius, who is in charge of the shelter says more and more people have been coming and asking to stay, and they are families now, which did not ocurr in the past, but there is not enough space. He says more needs to be done by the government.
"We don't have room; the problem has grown and increased. The needs are great, but (there is little) charity because the way the state and its leaders have handled things it has destroyed everything," he said. "Now we even have many women and children here, that is something new - a separated mother with two children who was abandoned by her husband lives here at the shelter."
The seperated mother he referred to said she used to work at a candle factory. After it closed down a year ago, she moved into the shelter with her two kids after she could not find another job and her husband left her. The woman's son, who covered his face to protect his identity, likes to play the guitar all day in the shelter, but he doesn't know how, and his mother said she wished she could afford lessons for him.
Unemployment in Greece is now more than 18 percent, according to the National Statistics Service, and 20 percent of the population is threatened with poverty. Close