Épinay-sur-Orge (France) (AFP)

Boost to integration devices, mobility and housing aid: the Prime Minister detailed on Saturday new measures against poverty, in addition to the financial aid announced in recent days for the most precarious, the first victims of the health crisis and social.

The anti-poverty associations immediately criticized the insufficiency of these announcements, regretting that the government still refuses to increase social minima.

"Attention to the poorest and most vulnerable is more than ever at the center of my government's priorities," assured Jean Castex, who came to present these new measures in an Emmaüs home in Epinay-sur-Orge (Essonne).

Noting that "the number of our fellow citizens who are in difficulty, who sometimes have difficulty even in feeding themselves, is increasing", the government intends to prevent a "slide" into poverty.

Beyond this financial effort, Jean Castex detailed on Saturday measures to promote the integration of the unemployed and their access to housing, costing more than 700 million euros.

Some 150 million will thus finance 30,000 new positions in the sector of integration through economic activity (IAE), which allows people furthest from employment to benefit from enhanced support.

- "Dressing measures" -

The government will also devote 120 million euros to doubling the "skills job paths" in the city's policy districts, and will increase its share of funding from 45 to 80%.

“Mobility platforms” will be developed, which will allow the unemployed to rent or buy a vehicle at a lower cost, to get to their place of work more easily.

Finally, the government intends to strengthen access to housing and emergency accommodation.

To do this, it will notably extend the aid for unpaid rents set up in June by Action Logement (the former "1% housing"), with a relaxation of the criteria for granting this aid for the most vulnerable.

This device has been "little used until now", noted Mr. Castex.

In addition, 1,500 places of accommodation and social support will be funded for homeless women leaving maternity with their infants, "to prevent them from sleeping in hospital premises or in the street".

The anti-poverty associations welcomed these announcements, while deeming them clearly insufficient.

"This is only a first step, we must go further," Pascal Brice, president of the Federation of Solidarity Actors (FAS), told AFP.

For Christophe Devys, who chairs the Alerte collective grouping together 35 national solidarity federations and associations, these measures are certainly "welcome".

But the government remains, according to him, camped on an "ideological position", refusing to increase the social minima, to prefer aid to integration through employment.

This revaluation, he stressed, is all the more necessary as the RSA now only reaches 39% of the minimum wage, against 50% in 1988, when the RMI was created (the ancestor of the RSA).

The reaction of ATD Fourth World, member of the Alerte collective, was even sharper, faced with "band aid measures, disconnected from people's lives".

According to this association, the choices of the executive stem from a "contempt" and a "hackneyed logic consisting in opposing the + good poor +, to whom we would give a boost to help them find the market of employment, and the + bad poor +, to whom we would distribute crumbs ".

© 2020 AFP