“The support that Italian families used to provide,” which essentially substituted for a welfare state, “is no longer something that can be taken for granted,” said Alberto Bruno, provincial commissioner of the Italian Red Cross in Milan. His volunteers, he said, have come across men living in cars, even in Milan’s Linate Airport, “mixing with passengers, dressed in their suits.”

One volunteer, Gianni Villa, 25, who takes food, clothing and blankets once a week to Milan’s growing legions of homeless, said he was surprised at the change he had seen. “Before, men who lived on the streets were vagrants, people adrift or drug addicts,” he said. “Nowadays you find people there because of the economic crisis or because of personal problems.”

“They don’t tell you they are fathers,” he said, “because they don’t want their family to know.”

Franco, 56, who did not want to use his full name so as to avoid the shame of his wife and two daughters learning of his troubles, left his native Puglia in April after his business went bankrupt. He said he traveled to Milan to look for work, in part to keep up alimony payments to his wife of 34 years, whom he is divorcing. The couple separated about a year and half ago, he said.

“In Puglia I was living day to day, but I couldn’t keep that up forever,” he said, adding that he was still supporting his daughters, both of whom are in their early 20s but unemployed.

With no place to stay in Milan as of April, Franco said he was “very fortunate” to meet a man at a McDonald’s who gave him a blanket and showed him “the ropes of living on the street.” It was not long before he was sleeping on a box under the portico facing Milan’s stock exchange.