Their name sometimes joins that of a block of buildings or a busy avenue. Others, on the contrary, appear more rarely in the areas that we think of when talking about a city. These neighborhoods are those of around ten towns in Brittany, in which more than three out of ten inhabitants live below the poverty line.
“The average poverty rates at the level of departments or large cities sometimes hide enormous local disparities,” recalls the Observatory of Inequalities, in its report on poverty which has just been published. Going into these urban details, however, remains rarer and sometimes arouses fears of stigmatization. “Far from pointing out the least dynamic or most poorly managed territories, this mapping makes it possible to identify where the needs are most acute in terms of public policies to combat poverty,” underlines the association on this point.
Rennes and Brest are home to the poorest neighborhoods
First of all, the obvious: the cities of Rennes and Brest have the most neighborhoods marked by very high poverty, both in number and intensity. In Rennes, near Allée de Brno, Maurepas district, two out of three residents are poor, according to the threshold usually used by INSEE (see box at the end of the article). This very marked proportion, which is not the norm in Brittany, is similar to the level of poverty measured in certain disadvantaged neighborhoods of Marseille, such as La Castellane.
Still in Rennes, Dalle Kennedy, in Villejean, or Torigné, in the south of the city, have more than one in two inhabitants living below the poverty line. In Brest, the districts of Pontanézen and Kerangoff are home to a similar proportion of poor people, around 50% of the population.
These places correspond to INSEE zoning, determined based on a certain homogeneity of housing and significant urban boundaries (roads, railways, parks, etc.). Sometimes more specific than an everyday neighborhood, they have the advantage of housing a comparable population, from 1,200 to 3,600 inhabitants. The high rates cannot therefore be explained by the sole effect of a small number of people living there.
Less than 730 euros per month
Vannes, Lorient, Saint-Brieuc and Quimper also have a district in which at least one person in two is poor. In Vannes, part of Kercado is affected. The Scorff park in Lorient, the Ville-Oger in Saint-Brieuc, the Place d'école in Quimper also have this proportion.
In all these neighborhoods, the poorest 10% of residents live on less than 730 euros per month. Even without targeting the income extremes, the low level of living resources is noticeable: of all the inhabitants of these places, half live on less than 1,200 euros per month.
All these areas of large urban centers cover, in part, a territory designated as a priority district of the city (QPV). Logic: the scope of these QPV depends on the income of the inhabitants. High levels of poverty therefore partly overlap with these identified areas.
At slightly lower levels, but still very marked, the North-West zone of Guingamp (22), which notably covers the Castel-Pic district, has almost four out of ten inhabitants (39%) living in poverty. A little further away, another area integrating Roudourou and la Madeleine has a third (33%) of poor people.
In total, seven Breton towns are home to a district with a poverty rate of at least 33%. Beyond this significant threshold of a third, a few other medium-sized towns or cities less often associated with issues of poverty stand out. In Saint-Malo (35), more than three in ten people (32%) living in the Découverte district are poor. In Fougères (35), that of Cotterets displays the same rate. Finally, Lanester (56) reminds us that precariousness is not just a matter of distance, in certain cities: the city center district displays the same rate.
Where do these cards come from?
In July 2024, INSEE published statistics on income and poverty by Iris zone in 2021. The geography of the neighborhoods is disseminated by the IGN. The maps and data presented in this article are based on these figures, after having isolated the neighborhoods where the poverty rate reaches 33%.
The poverty line depends on the resources available after tax for an adult person (the standard of living) available to half of the population. It is customary to set the poverty line at 60% of this median standard of living. In 2022, this corresponds to 1,216 euros per month for a single person.
