⏱️🧒 Unemployment, rents, social housing: what leads to food and housing insecurity. Age, income, duration already spent at the Restos: what hinders or facilitates exit.
The note provides numerical benchmarks on the audience of food aid : age, employment, income, rents, disposable income and duration of stay at the Restos du Cœur (p. 3 to 7). It clearly defines food insecurity, housing insecurity and homelessness, according to the European ETHOS typology (p. 2 and 3). It separates what leads to severe poverty from what helps to exit it, and shows that the economic situation mainly affects entry (p. 8 to 12). The authors derive two priorities for public policies. First, prevention, which they consider the most powerful lever: stable employment, affordable housing, price stability. Then, for households already affected, early and targeted support (p. 12 and 13).
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1️⃣ SUMMARY
The authors start from an observation: extreme poverty is little studied, as the available data poorly covers the most disadvantaged, especially the homeless (p. 1). They exploit the anonymised data from Restos du Cœur: 1,928 centres, two registration campaigns per year, 1.3 million people welcomed in 2025, of which about 40% are in residential precarity (p. 1, 3). The first part describes the audience: age, duration of visits, employment, income and expenses (p. 3-7). The second estimates, by living area, the effect of unemployment, rents, average income, social housing or the number of businesses on the inflows and outflows, then the effect of individual characteristics on the outflows (p. 7-12). The note concludes with an exercise on the share of inflation and unemployment in the rise of homelessness since 2018, and with conclusions for public policies (p. 12-13). The document does not specify a particular readership.
2️⃣ WHAT TO REMEMBER
1️⃣ A short-term but very widespread risk (observation). More than 5.5 million people, equivalent to 8% of the population, received help from Restos at least once between 2018 and 2025. A visit lasts on average about 18 months; only 14 % of people stay more than 3 years (p. 3, 5-6).
2️⃣ The entry reacts to the local economy, the exit very little . Unemployment and rising rents increase entries. The average income, the stock of social housing and the number of businesses reduce them. For example, +10% of social housing per inhabitant reduces residential precariousness by about 2.5% and homelessness by more than 8%, while higher rent assistance seems to have no effect (p. 9-10). No macroeconomic variable has a robust significant effect on exits. This does not mean that households remain trapped in poverty: exit rates remain high, but they are little dependent on the economic situation (p. 10)
3️⃣ Inflation, the driver of the rise in homelessness. If prices had remained at 2018 levels, the number of homeless households would have increased by 29% instead of 61 %. All else being equal, inflation thus explains more than half (52%) of the increase. Conversely, the evolution of unemployment has slowed it down: at its 2018 level, there would now be 12% more homeless people (p. 12).
3️⃣ TO ACT
The document is an economic study: it does not contain any immediately applicable field actions. The suggestions below remain as close as possible to what it writes.
1️⃣ Prevent first, then act early . For the authors, prevention is the most powerful lever: stability of the labour market, availability of affordable housing and price stability (p. 12). For households that have already fallen into poverty, the economic situation helps little. Early and targeted support is needed, "without delay", before the time spent in shelters makes exit more difficult (p. 12-13).
Qualify housing situations using the ETHOS typology (existing tool explicitly cited). The note classifies residential situations according to the European typology of housing exclusion ETHOS: homeless, without personal housing, precarious housing, inadequate housing (p. 2-3).
3️⃣ Follow the continuation of the work (preparation for an announced action — work in progress). The authors continue their work with data from the Family Allowance Fund, to study the pathways before entry and after exit from the Restos (job losses, family breakdowns…) and the short and long-term consequences (p. 13).
4️⃣ 3 PRACTICAL QUESTIONS
1️⃣ How long do people stay? On average about 18 months at the Restos, 17 months for an episode of residential precariousness.35 to 40% of households only stay for one campaign (at most 4 months in winter, 8 months in summer). It is rare (about 10% of cases) for a person to return after at least a year of absence. Those over 65 take longer to exit (21 months on average) (p. 5-6).
2️⃣ Which ages are most exposed? Children and adolescents are very largely overrepresented, while older people are underrepresented. Nearly 25% of people in residential precariousness are children aged 0 to 9 years, almost systematically in families composed of a single mother, compared to 10% in the population (p. 4).
3️⃣ What factors influence exit? The individual or household characteristics: being 65 years old or older (−10 points compared to those under 25), income (+10 points from 0 to 500 € per month and per consumption unit) and especially the duration already spent at the Restos (−10 points after at least 3 years, for a baseline level of about 32% per campaign) (p. 11-12).
5️⃣ TO GO FURTHER
On the blog Practices in Health: Children without a roof, but not without rights — The power of cities to act against the exclusion of children related to housing (23 August 2026). A guide on the role of municipalities in the face of the exclusion of children related to housing. Link noted on the ‘housing’ section page of the blog on 9 Oct. 2026; article page not opened: to be checked manually before dissemination.
External resource: Food insecurity warning signals — sheet hosted on the Coallia association's website. A list of observable signals (discourse, visible indicators, behaviours, aggravating factors) to identify a situation of food insecurity in support. URL opened and verified on 9 Oct. 2026; published in February 2026 according to the file address (date not indicated in the text excerpt).
6️⃣ #️⃣ HASHTAGS
#practicesinhealth #ExtremePoverty #FoodInsecurity #ResidentialInsecurity #Homelessness #SocialHousing #SocialDeterminants #Prevention
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