On the square outside Nevers (central France) train station, a few passengers have gotten off the train from Paris. Five people sat near a green flowerpot, with their dogs. A little apart, Nathalie (name changed), her skin tan by the sun, rolled a cigarette next to a shopping bag filled with her personal belongings. Skirting a run-down hotel under the gray sky of this late July Wednesday, she headed to Le Prado, a non-profit organization offering a drop-in center and emergency shelter for people experiencing severe poverty, to get lunch.

After a three-minute walk, she joined about ten people sitting side by side, rolling cigarettes and drinking canned beer. A police car drove down the narrow alley parallel to the facility. "Here come the schmitts [police]," shouted one of the men sitting on a low wall. "Quick, the dogs!" he added, moving the three Belgian Malinois lying in the road.

"The cops are giving us even more hell these days," said Alexis, 21, a Nevers local and former resident of the Aide Sociale à l'Enfance (child welfare services), who, like a third of this population, ended up on the street at 18, according to a 2019 study by the Fondation pour le logement des défavorisés (Foundation for Housing the Disadvantaged). "When we're already barely surviving here…" A woman with long, yellow-dyed hair interrupted him. "You mean, withering away, yeah," she laughed, puffing out a cloud of smoke.

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