Vinnies North West regional director Phil Donnan said the increase comes following a dramatic fall when the Federal Government provided additional financial assistance due to the COVID pandemic.

"When COVID hit and the government's extra payments kicked in we did notice a good halving of the people seeking assistance so the government payments were quite effective. When they ceased we then did start to see some people coming back to us," he said.

"We are yet to see demand return to pre-COVID levels but that's happening very rapidly at the moment."

To help control that rise, Vinnies is calling on the government to be more generous with welfare payments.

"We know that has a very high impact on people seeking assistance," Mr Donnan said.

"We do have noticeably more people who are homeless transitioning through Orange."

He said many of those people had come to seek mental health treatment at Bloomfield.

"They tend to be a bit transitionary, come in, leave, go again," Mr Donnan said.

"While they are the ones that are sleeping rough, homelessness is a bit of an iceberg and for every person you see sleeping rough, there's usually about nine others that are homeless in ways that people don't see and that's sleeping on couches, sleeping in their cars and moving around.

"Orange has a good presence of those and because if you get people sleeping rough they tend to do so more down at the coast where it's a bit warmer."

Next week is Homelessness Awareness Week and Vinnies will also be conducting a community sleep out afterwards on August 19 with all funds to go to its Vinnies van, which goes out two nights a fortnight to help people at locations across Orange.

Although Vinnies does not provide accommodation itself and instead refers people to organisations such as Housing Plus and Link2Home, it spent $147,035 on food, bill and other supports for people in the Orange region in the 2021 to 2022 financial year, $9464 more than it had a year earlier.

Those figures from the Orange Regional Council area include Orange, Molong, Cowra, Blayney.

However, the North West region reaches from Oberon and Cowra up to the Queensland border and Mr Donnan is seeing the same thing happening in most major centres in that are.

"It's the same sort of pressure, the real estate prices increasing, rents increasing, a lot of people moving out of Sydney and the metro areas to the regions, or investing in the regions," he said.

Of the people who sought help in the 2021 to 2022 financial year, 48 per cent were experiencing housing stress, a four per cent increase on the previous year.

"We class that as, if people are spending over 30 per cent of their income on putting a roof over their heads they're in housing stress," Mr Donnan said.

"As the stats show, nearly half of the ones who wander in to see us are in housing stress."

He said combined with that are the increased costs with fuel and the flow on effect to produce in the shops is having a "substantial" impact.

"We're seeing a number of new people and those people tend to be low income earners with younger families that are finding things really tough."

"Just the general increase in cost of living across the board, the real estate combined with fuel, combined with produce and now energy bills, people have been hit unilaterally for increased cost of living so it's having a dramatic effect.

"In February, March this year there was a noticeable increase in the number of people seeking assistance and we are yet to see the impact of increased energy bills, gas and electricity, as people get their first winter bills I'm sure they are going to be a bit shocked by how much more it is and seek a bit of assistance.

"We certainly see the impact on the most vulnerable people in society."

People who do need assistance with the winter power bills can get help through the EAPA, a government assistance scheme they can access through Services NSW, but Vinnies can help with advocacy or helping people with plans with their energy provider.

"If we can free up a bit of household income with helping people with food and other bits and pieces, that frees up a bit of money to address the bill," Mr Donnan said.

According to the Vinnies data, the number of people receiving assistance also rose by 53 people, going from 744 to 797. Of those people, 490 were female and 307 were male and 36 per cent were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

The largest age cohort seeking assistance is people aged between 40 and 49 with 221 receiving help in the last financial year, an increase of 28 people. There were also 185 people aged between 30 and 39, 159 between 50 and 59, 138 between 18 and 29, 89 aged over 60 and five aged under 18 who received assistance.

However, Vinnies has reported a one per cent decrease in the number of people in public housing with 38 per cent of people they saw in public housing.

There was a six per cent in the number of people renting, 31 per cent, and a two per cent increase in homeless clients, 17 per cent.

There were 38 per cent of people on Job Seeker, with no change, and 31 per cent were on a disability support pension, which was a one per cent decrease.

Of the people who receive support from Vinnies, 92 per cent present with a need for food assistance, which is the same percentage as the previous reporting period.

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