Seine-Saint-Denis has long been one of France’s poorest areas, but the pandemic has laid bare social rifts as never before

In his small apartment in Paris’s outer suburbs , the 85-year-old’s food cupboards were bare. When volunteers arrived, the man was down to a crust of old baguette and a few dry biscuits. Living alone and with no family, the pensioner, who had come from Morocco to France after the war to help rebuild the railways, was too afraid to leave his home.

“He was trapped there with nothing to eat and hadn’t seen his doctor in weeks,” said Abdelaali El Badaoui, founder of charity Banlieues Santé.

“He hadn’t eaten for days and was frightened and confused. We were able to give him supplies for a week and call his doctor to arrange a remote consultation. Since then we’ve been doing weekly follow-up visits and dropping off his medicine. He’s doing well.”

France has now been in coronavirus lockdown for six weeks, and has seen more than 21,000 deaths from the virus. But social distancing in the neuf-trois, the deprived Seine-Saint-Denis département north of Paris, looks very different to that of Saint-Tropez, where billionaires in a gated compound were reported last week to be paying for private Covid-19 tests.

“We are locked down in our inequality,” said the Seine-Saint-Denis MP Alexis Corbière. “The virus has just amplified the problems the banlieue has had for a long time. It has revealed how wide and deep the social fracture really is.”

For decades le neuf-trois has broken records: the poorest area of mainland France, with more than 28% of residents – a large number of them immigrants – living below the breadline; the highest unemployment – up to 40% in some districts; the most social housing – 10% of which is sub-standard; and inadequate public services. Even before the pandemic it was a grim symbol of France’s inequalities in wealth, opportunity and living standards.

Now, as the virus hits the most vulnerable, those rifts are clear as never before. In March, the national statistics institute, Insee, found the death rate in Seine-Saint-Denis up 62% on the previous year. Undertakers said they were overwhelmed.

With 1.6 million inhabitants, making it one of France’s most densely populated departments, Seine-Saint-Denis has the lowest number of doctors per head, but the highest rates of obesity and diseases including cancer, diabetes and asthma.

“Many arrive at hospital already in a critical condition because they tend not to have regular care or contact with the health system,” said Corbière, a member of the hard-left La France Insoumise. “And a lot of people here have jobs that can’t be done from home: underpaid frontline jobs like cleaners, builders, refuse collectors – people who have to use public transport and so are more exposed.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Charity workers from the Banlieues Santé team check on a vulnerable resident. Photograph: Samir El Badaoui, Banlieues Santé

Mehdi Bigaderne, 37, co-founder of Aclefeu, a collective set up in 2005 after rioting in the mostly north African Clichy-sous-Bois neighbourhood, said problems had all been exacerbated by the virus.

“It has exploded the myth that we are all equal because clearly we’re not. People are trying to respect the lockdown, but what do you do if you’re a family of five or more in a small apartment on the 15th floor? How do you keep children in? How do you feed them when the markets where you buy cheap fruit and vegetables have closed and you can’t afford supermarkets? How can families whose children normally eat in school canteens now make three meals a day?

“It’s not new that Seine-Saint-Denis is a place of inequality, discrimination and social problems, but coronavirus has crystallised this.”

As well as distributing “lockdown packages” of food, toiletries and a mask, Banlieues Santé has recruited doctors to make multilingual videos explaining how people can protect themselves and has translated the document that all French people needed to carry to leave their homes into around 20 languages.

Among those it has helped is Yvette Maurice, 85, who lives alone in a 12-storey block. Suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, she was worried about buying food. “I received food packages for the last three weeks and it was a huge relief as it meant I could stay at home,” said Maurice.

Badaoui, a hospital cleaner who trained as a nurse, recalls a single mother of four who had symptoms of Covid-19 but was threatened with the sack if she didn’t turn up for her cleaning job: “We were able to advise her of her rights – that she could self-isolate at home without losing her job. In so many cases, social problems have to be resolved before medical issues.”

Not all his stories have happy endings. On a visit to one housing estate, volunteers found an elderly Algerian man, a former caretaker who had lived in France since the 1940s, dead in his home.

“It’s like nothing we have experienced,” Badaoui said. “We are the very last chance for many people. We act as a bridge between the health service and those most in need, some of whom are no longer in contact with health services or never were.”

Seine-Saint-Denis saw clashes last week between youths and police, sparked by a motorcyclist hitting a police car and being thrown from his bike, suffering a broken leg. There were accusations of heavy-handed policing of the lockdown.

“The banlieue is not aflame,” said Corbière. “We’re talking about a few fireworks, not riots. We’ve seen worse.”

Bigaderne agreed: “Those involved in recent events are a very small minority and a lot of it is down to frustration.”

The government and local authorities have pledged emergency payments to struggling families, but many in Seine-Saint-Denis will see little benefit .

“Not everyone, including the homeless and those without official papers, has the same access to rights,” Bigaderne said. “If you don’t reduce the social inequalities in these areas, there will always be problems. We’ve been saying this for 15 years. We cannot keep putting plasters over serious wounds.”

Corbière added that the crisis had also shown the depth of human solidarity within the banlieue’s many communities: “The virus has rocked society. Will it change things? We can but hope.”



