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France used to complain about the tackiness of its nouveaux riche.
Now, the concern is for the "nouveaux pauvre", who have become newly impoverished by losing their job or falling into debt or who struggle to make ends meet on a tiny pension or pay cheque.
Charities are
reporting a rise in demand at shelters for the homeless for free meals and parcels of food, as these vulnerable people feel the lash of a worsening economic crisis.
"Since October, we have seen an increase in young adults, but before that, we began to see a very large rise in the number of pensioners, which was new," said Heria Mir, spokeswoman at the Mie de Pain, Paris' main hostel for the homeless.
Near the Gare de Lyon station, Philippe Gobillon, who runs the Coeur des Haltes shelter, likewise says that a growing number of his "customers" are pensioners, who come for a meal and sit alongside the homeless.
Gobillon says he is astonished at a phenomenon that has developed in recent months - suburban commuters who miss the last train home and elect to sleep at the shelter alongside hardened tramps rather than hole up in one of the cheap hotels near the station.
"One night, we had eight people in this situation. It really surprised us and got us thinking that this was the start of something serious," he said.
One of the most popular charities, les Restaurants du Coeur, set up by the comedian, Coluche, says it has never faced such demands in its 23-year history.
The organisation runs a string of canteens, for which people need to show documented proof of having a low income, as well as distribution of packages of food by trucks, for which no such proof is needed.
"A few years ago, the only people who used to line up for the food trucks were the homeless. Now you see single mothers who can't make ends meet, even people with jobs who don't have enough money after paying the rent and the bills," said a volunteer.
Other charities with an older history, such as the Secours Catholique, the Red Cross and the Secours Populaire, say that nationally they have been helping between 10 and 15 per cent more people since the start of the year.
In some locations, the increase has been 50 or even 100 per cent.
Donations to food banks from supermarkets and individuals, though, have declined in many places in response to belt-tightening.
The Fondation Abbe Pierre, named after a Catholic priest who devoted his life to the poor, said that growing numbers of poor families were faced with the threat of expulsion.
"More than 500,000 households are more than two months behind with the rent, an increase of more than 96 per cent in the past four years in the private sector, and more than 58 per cent in the sector of state housing," it said in a press release last month.
For Paris alone, the Government is setting aside 16,400 beds in emergency shelters this winter, compared with 13,138 two years ago.
It has also earmarked ¬3 million ($7 million) in "mobile psychological help", comprising teams of psychiatrists who will help homeless people cope with the stress of their condition.
In September, the latest month for which there are figures, the numbers of unemployed rose by 1.0 per cent over the month, to 2.4 million people. This amounted to 7.2 per cent of the workforce.
But the raw statistic does not take into account the whirlwind that started to rip into global stock markets in September and is now having an impact on the real economy.
The storm is being especially felt in car manufacturing, one of France's major employers, and by young people who are hired on short-term contracts and slide swiftly into debt and sometimes homelessness when their contract is not renewed.
France defines its threshold of poverty not as an absolute figure, such as the number of people living on less than ¬600 per month, but as the tally who have an income of less than half the national average.
By this yardstick, the poverty threshold is ¬733 per month for a single person, or ¬1833 a month for a household comprising a couple with two children aged over 14.
More than 4.2 million people, or 7.2 per cent, lived below this threshold in 2006, according to the official statistics agency, Insee.
"Poverty has stopped shrinking and has even got worse for some sections of the population," Martin Hirsch, named by President Nicolas Sarkozy to head a poverty commission, told le Parisien last week.
"Charities are facing a diversification of demand. For instance, they are increasingly helping town-hall workers, parents who have fulltime jobs, young people and pensioners, who live life on the razor's edge," hesaid.
"They've gone from providing top-up assistance to helping people survive."
