The Report on Poverty in France, published today by Secours Catholique/Caritas France, looks, in its 88 pages, at the face of poverty in terms of employment and income. It finds that 17% of people who ask for help have a job (and 75% of them are French) but earn less than 800 euros a month, 38% of them are unemployed (living on a dole of 530 to 600 euros a month), and about 48% do nothing, a proportion that is increasing. The poverty line has been set at 1,015 euros a month, but the people who ask for help have an average income of 548 euros. The group of people who live in “makeshift accommodation” (friends, vans, in the streets, in shelters) is widening: they are 27%, mainly foreigners, and even the group of people who can no longer pay their rent is growing too, because the price of commodities is rising, the Report explains. The many tables and diagrams are completed by a number of political ideas that Secours Catholique is putting forward to try to curb the most serious imbalances it finds in its work as well as 8 files to “fight the prejudice” that surrounds poverty and to respond to the most common objections, such as “there’s plenty of work, just go out there and find it”, “immigrants make our welfare system poorer”, “they have children to be entitled to social housing”. This, with the intention to report not only poverty, but also the “unfair treatment of people and families in distress”.