Last year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found homelessness in Australia had increased by 14 per cent over a five-year period, with 116,427 people thought to have no permanent home.

The Municipality of Melbourne is planning to create a crisis shelter with hundreds of beds to help get people off park benches and street corners.
Greek community members are among the homeless, and Greek Australian nurse Helen Andrianakis is one of the nurses that offers her services to the city’s needy.

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“I believe there are dozens,” she said, mainly men but she adds that there are also Greek women roaming the streets.

Ms Andrianakis recently took the streets with her colleagues and members of the police force to give out hundreds of blankets to homeless people sleeping in the cold streets of Melbourne.