In her fourth-floor apartment here, Valy Pantelemidou, 37, a speech therapist, is, like many other Greeks, trying to save money on heating oil by using her fireplace to stay warm.
Unemployment is at a record high of 26.8 percent in Greece, and many people have had their salaries and pensions cut, but those are not the main reasons so few residents here can afford heating oil. In the fall, the Greek government raised the taxes on heating oil by 450 percent.
Overnight, the price of heating a small apartment for the winter shot up to about $1,900 from $1,300. "At the beginning of autumn, it was the biggest topic with all my friends: How are we going to heat our places?" said Ms. Pantelemidou, who has had to lower her fees to keep clients. "Now, when I am out walking the dog, I see people with bags picking up sticks. In this neighborhood, really."
In raising the taxes, government officials hoped not just to increase revenue but also to equalize taxes on heating oil and diesel, to cut down on the illegal practice of selling cheaper heating oil as diesel fuel. But the effort, which many Greeks dismiss as a cruel stupidity, appears to have backfired in more than one way.
For one thing, the government seems to be losing money on the measure. Many Greeks, like Ms. Pantelemidou, are simply not buying any heating oil this year. Sales in the last quarter of 2012 plunged 70 percent from a year earlier, according to official figures.
So while the government has collected more than $63 million in new tax revenue, it appears to have lost far more — about $190 million, according to an association of Greek oil suppliers — in revenue from sales taxes on the oil.
Meanwhile, many Greeks are suffering from the cold. In one recent survey by Epaminondas Panas, who leads the statistics department at the Athens University of Economics and Business, nearly 80 percent of respondents in northern Greece said they could not afford to heat their homes properly.
The return to wood burning is also taking a toll on the environment. Illegal logging in national parks is on the rise, and there are reports of late-night thefts of trees and limbs from city parks in Athens, including the disappearance of the olive tree planted where Plato is said to have gone to study in the shade.
At the same time, the smoke from the burning of wood — and often just about anything else that will catch fire — has caused spikes in air pollution that worry health officials. On some nights, the smog is clearly visible above Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, and in Athens, where particulate matter has been measured at three times the normal levels.
"Places that in 2008 wouldn't even think about using their fireplaces for heating, now they are obliged to do so," said Stefanos Sabatakakis, a health supervisor with the Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He said the rise in pollution could cause eye irritation and headaches in the short term and far more serious problems in the long term. The air is particularly bad for asthma sufferers.
The agency has asked that anyone who is lighting living-room fires just for the aesthetics give them up. It has also uploaded information on its Web site about what not to burn — anything that is painted or lacquered, for instance. But in these times, Mr. Sabatakakis acknowledged, people are not that picky.
Government officials say it is too early to judge the new tax. The winter is not yet over. It has not been particularly cold, they say, and many people may have stocked up on fuel oil last season. In the north of Greece, temperatures often dip to freezing at night, while in Athens they are more likely to stay in the low 40s.
"This is a very complex environment," said Harry Theoharis, the secretary general of the Ministry of Finance, adding that many factors were affecting people's behavior. "It is not easy to isolate and say: 'O.K., this tax, this is the effect it had.' "
He said there were no clear indications yet that the tax had discouraged illicit sales of heating oil as diesel, though he had detected a slight change in buying patterns that might indicate some change.
It is impossible not to notice the stacks of wood for sale all over Athens this year. Not far from Ms. Pantelemidou's place is a wood lot run by Valantis Topalis, 44, who used to own an interior design company. He started selling wood last year, eager to have a business that was not reliant on people paying their bills.
Last year, he made some money. But this year, he said, everybody is selling wood — some of it stolen from national parks — and business is not so good. Even in this wealthy area, a lot of the customers come in for only 20 euros, or $27, worth of wood on colder days.
"The worst part is not the lack of money," Mr. Topalis said of his life today. "The worst part today is the mood that people are in."
Those who can afford to, like Ms. Pantelemidou, are using a combination of their fireplaces and electric heaters, unsure what this will do to their electric bills. But that is likely to bring some unpleasant surprises, as the government recently announced an increase in the cost of electricity that, depending on consumption, could be as much as 20 percent.
Still, oil suppliers are glum about their prospects. Elias Bekkas, who provides oil to 65 buildings around the city, said that many of his clients had not ordered any oil, and that some who had could not pay the bill. Last winter, he said, his company sold a little more than a million gallons. This season, it has sold only about 65,000 gallons, and he doubted the total would get to 225,000.
Tenant meetings to decide whether to buy oil, he said, have gotten ugly. A year ago, two buildings covered the costs for people who could not pay. But this year there is only bickering.
"There is anger, bitterness between neighbors who can afford oil and those that cannot," Mr. Bekkas said. "That is what Greece is like now."
Hes said he had detected a third class of people as well this winter. "There are those who are just making a political statement," he said. "They are just angry about the taxes."
Ms. Pantelemidou, like many others in newer buildings, has a fireplace that was designed largely for decorative purposes. It hardly heats her living room, let alone the rest of her apartment. She has pulled a chair close to it so she can stay warm.
In a working-class area of town, Aggeliki and Christos Makris are also making do without heating oil. They bought their three-bedroom apartment in 2009, when they had a combined income of $63,400 for a family of five.
Since then, the salary of Mrs. Makris, 45, who works as a cleaner for the government has been cut to about $1,100 a month from $1,750 a month. Mr. Makris, 42, who runs heavy machinery at a mining company, lost all of his overtime. They are behind on their taxes and, after mortgage payments, living on less than $340 a week. To cut down on the electric bill, Mrs. Makris has even reduced the ironing she does.
Paying for heating oil was out of the question. This year, Mr. Makris went north to his village to cut firewood himself. He said no one in his building wanted to buy heating oil. "The super did not even bother to ask," said Mr. Makris. "We are all in debt."
The Makrises said they were at least lucky that they had made a good choice in upgrading the fireplace when they bought the apartment. It burns efficiently and warms much of their living space.
Mr. Makris said it was far worse for the pensioners he saw, who really need central heating and do not have the strength, the energy or the money to get good firewood. Instead, they pick up scraps of wood left on the street, whether it is painted or not.
"There is an old man I see at the market, and every week there is less and less in his grocery bag," he said. "I cannot blame him, no matter what garbage he burns."
Dimitris Bounias and Nikolia Apostolou contributed reporting.
