Emmanuel Macron may have declared war on poverty, but in the poorest towns of France there is little love lost for the ex-banker slammed by critics as a "president of the rich", reports FRANCE 24.
Just south of the gleaming architectural treasures of Paris lies Grigny, a town emblematic of entrenched urban poverty in a country that spends more on social benefits than any other in Europe.
The statistics on Grigny's massive housing estates, a jump-off point for newly arrived immigrants from west Africa and elsewhere, make for grim reading.
Nearly 45 percent of the town's 30,000 residents live below the poverty line, surviving on less than 1,000 euros ($1,150) a month. Unemployment is chronic and most teens drop out of high school before their final exams.
Last year, a fire in one of the grim tower blocks of Grigny 2 – one of Europe's biggest housing complexes, with 17,000 residents – exposed the fact that slum landlords had crammed some 80 people into six squalid apartments.
Another estate, Grande Borne, is notorious as the site of an attack on police in 2016 when youths firebombed officers in their car, badly burning two of them.
Situated 25 kilometres (15 miles) from central Paris, Grigny is the kind of place that shouts "no-go zone" to US President Donald Trump.
But it is more drab than dangerous.
Cafes and supermarkets are few and far between. The only stores doing a roaring trade in the dilapidated shopping centre are money transfer centres where migrants queue to send cash home.
Towns like this will be on Macron's mind with the launch on Thursday of a highly anticipated plan to reduce the ranks of the poor in France, which have swelled by a million to nine million (14% of the population) since the financial crisis a decade ago.
A self-described centrist, he has attracted criticism over his 16 months in power that his policies -- including tax cuts for the wealthiest -- have left the poor behind.
France spent 57 billion euros on welfare in 2016 and Macron has expressed frustration at the "crazy amounts of dough" spent on benefits without producing results.
The biggest problem, he argues, is "inequality of opportunity".
"Depending on where you are born," he told lawmakers in July, "your fate is often sealed."
His plan focuses on boosting social mobility and early intervention, by for example providing free school breakfasts for children living in poverty.
"Our poverty plan is worth 8 billion euros, spread over four years," government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told the free newspaper 20 Minutes.
"It's a very strong political choice at a time when we are paying very close attention to public spending."
Griveaux did not specify how the money would be spent but said the government planned several measures to get people either back to work or into better jobs. While various welfare programmes have been expanded over the last two decades, Griveaux said they had failed to root out the causes of poverty.