“We’re in dire straits for winter wear,” St Vincent de Paul’s Alan Dickens said on Friday.

“We just don’t have the same quality merchandise coming through that we use to have.”

A year ago Mr Dickens despaired at the charity’s difficulty in being able to keep up with a 20 per cent jump in demand for help.

But the situation is now even worse, despite a strong community response last winter.

The desperate plea for help has grown again by another 30 per cent.

“We have a lot of people here who are spending all their money on their electricity and their gas,” Mr Dickens said.

“That means they’re not going out to buy new clothes.

“And if they’re not buying new clothes they’re not donating old clothes, especially anything that is good quality.”

Mr Dickens is St Vinnies’ retail area manager for Albury-South West, which has had to source clothes from its Griffith and Wagga outlets to keep up with demand.

The trouble now though is that both those areas are starting to run short.

The situation has forced St Vinnies to begin a letterbox campaign calling for help.

“We’re not getting it in like we were so we’re having to go out and get it,” Mr Dickens said.

St Vinnies is also supplying furniture to up to 14 houses a week on the Border.

“People don’t realise that St Vincent de Paul is one of the few charities in town that actually helps people who are coming off the streets into emergency housing,” he said.

“And there is a lot of emergency housing in Albury-Wodonga.”

The clothing shortfall is made even worse by the fact that at least half of all donations is poor quality.

This has been exacerbated by the internet, with many people preferring to sell their decent unwanted clothes online.

Mr Dickens said the situation was made quite difficult by all the donation bins “dropped into Albury” for charities not based on the Border.

“They pick up the donations and send these back to Melbourne to be recycled,” he said.

Mr Dickens said most people coming through the charity’s support centres “are just ordinary families”.

“But you find that the people who are buying from our shops are middle and higher income,” he said.

“That’s because everybody has been hit by the extra costs of living.”

Anyone wishing to donate is asked to visit the Lavington centre, which has a laneway behind Urana Road with car parks and drop-in bins.