Secours Catholique Français met 1,463,000 people in difficulty in 2015. This figure has increased by nearly 3% compared to 2014.
“We are seeing a growing impoverishment of families.” This is the observation of 2016 statistical report published by Secours Catholique. It is based on the analysis of 85,179 distinct situations among the 1,463,000 people welcomed by the association in 2015 (+2.7% compared to 2014). He draws a landscape of France of poverty where territorial disparities and inequalities continue to widen.. The financial crisis that the country has been experiencing since 2007 has undoubtedly been one of them..
With respectively 57% and 55%, the need to listen and food needs remain by far the main demands expressed by the people received by Secours Catholique.
672 euros per month
Then follow various requests for assistance in the payment of rent and invoices (18%), clothing (10%) and transport costs, or even support in administrative procedures. Eating oneself therefore remains a challenge for the people encountered, especially since the price of food has risen sharply in recent years.
So difficult to balance a budget. All the more so as the vast majority of people welcomed by Secours Catholique (92%) remain below the poverty line (1,008 euros / month) and 65% live on less than 672 euros per month. At the same time, the proportion of households without resources continued to increase, reaching 19.5% in 2015. Four points more than in 2010.
9 million poor people in France
But the misery does not unfortunately stop at the doors of the association. Secours Catholique estimates that palmost 9 million people, including 3 million children, live in poverty in France.
And some audiences are more affected than others. “We are seeing an increasing precariousness of families, women and children, as well as people of foreign origin, with more people without resources, in very precarious housing”, it is written in the report. “Contrary to what one believes, this increase is not due to the increase in the number of migrants present in the territory but to the fact that the situation of this category of individuals is more and more fragile”, specify the authors.
And a few days before the first round of the primary of the right and the center, the association concludes its report by calling on all the candidates for the 2017 presidential elections to make the end of poverty the priority issue.
“For ten years, this precariousness has increased and we have not succeeded in reducing poverty in our country. It undermines the foundations of our society. The fight against poverty, and particularly against long-term unemployment, should be taken to the highest level in the electoral campaign, which is unfortunately not the case ”.
the dramatic fate of strangers
“Since the 2000s, we have observed a regular increase in the proportion of foreigners in the reception areas of Secours Catholique” relates the association. It reveals that the figure has even almost doubled in fifteen years (20% to 36.4%). While the foreign population in France is generally stable.
This creeping insecurity of foreigners is explained by a greater “administrative insecurity” which generates difficulties of access to rights, as well as by the restriction of these rights. In fact, the laws governing access to residence for foreigners have been tightened regularly over the past fifteen years. The residence permits issued have a limited duration of one year and their renewal is long and complicated. Thus, even for people “in a regular situation” (43%), it is difficult to have access to rights (housing, health, employment, family allowances, etc.). Many of them are, moreover, working poor.
The situation is even more catastrophic for people in an irregular situation (18%) because they have no legal rights, or very few, and they are ostracized from society. For example, they often live in precarious housing (squats, hotel rooms, slums) because they do not have access to an already saturated accommodation system.
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