Just 30 kilometers south of
Forty-five percent live below the French poverty line (set at
The damage caused by the pandemic is visible at the local food bank, run by the national charity "Restos du Coeur" ('Restaurants of the Heart').
The establishment has seen a 14 percent increase in its membership since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis.
The charity estimates that 2,500 people now come daily to its facilities, prefabricated cabins set up next to high rise apartment blocks.
Most of them are foreign - there are 90 nationalities represented in the town. And among them, there are those without documents, like Moroccan
"I have no job, I earn nothing and I thank the 'Resto du Coeur' because it has helped me a lot. There are people who are not even lucky enough to be helped," Mediouni, who also works as a volunteer at the food bank, tells Efe.
Housed in a local social shelter with her two children and divorced from her husband, she relies on charities to survive.
"I've been in
"There are new people who used to work for a few hours. And with this crisis they have lost those hours. What shocks me the most is that some of them tell us that their only meal of the day comes from here."
"Poverty here affects children first and foremost. Fifty percent of the residents are under 30 years of age. We face the pandemic of poverty, which already existed, but which is worsening with Covid", mayor of
Rio has asked the central government for help, and in January Grigny was chosen as the location for the announcement of an ambitious national plan to fight poverty through a series of investments in sectors such as housing, education, health and infrastructure.
"It is an insult and it is immoral and dangerous that there are poles of misery in the richest region of
"We, the suburbs, are the youth of
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