Perhaps the tramps ['SDFs'] have been moved on. There were a couple in Fontainebleau who used to hang out by a carpark, offering to put the exit ticket into the machine in exchange for a coin, and became quite verbally abusive to anyone who didn't "pay" them. They disappeared from the town, but I recognised them at the Gare de Lyon in Paris a couple of months ago.
The food bank drives are becoming more frequent, and the people collecting seem to expect one to give more each time. If you go to two different supermarkets on the same day, it can become expensive.
There's one or two SDF's here in Bernay usually outside the local Intermarche, she looks Romany but I can't be sure as she doesn't seem to understand when talk french but that could be my acccent. I gave a little when I could but stopped the day she pulled out a mobile phone that I can't afford. Every couple of months there's a food drive at the supermarket but they are becoming more frequent. It should be easier on my budget when my boy finishes his exams and goes back to the UK to continue job hunting, but my OH is retiring in a few weeks and with the loss of his private pension so only a very small state pension of about £60 a week I think it could be tight for a while until he restarts the veggie garden, and maybe it's time to get some animals, I could end up vegetarian as I know I can't bring myself to kill flies.
If you have a résidence secondaire I strongly suspect you don't get any rebates but I may well be wrong - the people to talk to are your local centre d'impôts fonciers who won't be the same office (at least they aren't here) as the normal impôts sur le revenu office, if you go along with the plan of your house & land etc they will tell you what's what. The taxe d'habitation is all done through one centre now (Montpellier??) but your local tax people will be able to give you all the proper information. I have found going & asking & getting the info from the horse's mouth usually pays dividends.
Just got back from a long weekend in the Royan area. Royan itself looks ok nowadays with the roads better maintained from my last visit and the seafront has been 'done-up'. A few people about spending their dosh too. Ile d'Oléron was the usual chaotic mess and Cognac was basically 'closed' ! Mind you, it is sunday but even so ? The one thing noticeable about all three places was the lack of SDFs, I don't know if that's a good or bad sign for the economy ? The reasoning is a) There a loads of SDFs hanging around & begging which could be a sign of local prosperity which brings in the SDFs or, the lack of them indicates the area is so poor even the SDFs don't feel it's a good place to try to beg etc ?
John, I have spent many years in Berlin. When I hear them striking up: Das macht die Berliner Luft, Luft, Luft so mit ihrem holden Duft, Duft, Duft
and when I hear how 'clean' the forest and lakes are (my younger son died on the Müggelsee even) then my jaw hangs slack. As much as I really love that city, it is an absolute tip. It is off topic, but that is a very affluent city for you. All that glitters is not gold... as they say. France has its flaws but it is mostly clean.
My local area, in rural Poitou Charente has a prosperous feel about it. Properties are smart, the towns well maintained, the shops busy and there are plenty of new cars on the road. I spent a few days on the coast last week and that appeared to be doing even better. I’m sure that there are plenty of people around who find day to day life difficult so it would appear that the divide in society is just like it is in the UK, those with reasonable jobs and income are enjoying the good times, those who do not are finding things as hard or even harder than ever before.
Slightly off topic but relevant; I spent a couple of weeks in Germany last year, a country I know well having spent more than half my life living there. I was surprised, on my return to France, to note how much cleaner and tidier the towns and countryside are here.
Unfortunately, as somebody from Bordeaux who has a second home near us would tell you, the assumption is that if people can afford to run two homes then concessions are not extended the same as for those in one with a low income. A second home English man near us is screaming blue murder because he is taxed for his little place that he uses six weeks a year claiming that local taxes, standard water charges, standard power charges and other things that he needs to pay like insurance, etc, etc, should not apply to him. We don't like the man but he is forever coming to us to vent his spleen about what it costs to keep the place here which if he sold would lose money because he paid X. Perhaps you are OK Elizabeth but some people do just imagine they can buy, own and live outside the rest of the economy.
After over three years of less income than the average we are temporarily over the hump. I say temporarily because I am pensionable ages, as they put it, but still working a bit and thus generating income on top of the UK standard state pension (all I have after my private one went bust and my compensatory payout still a long way down the line - if ever). My OH is earning two incomes but we still hit patches when we have low to no income to speak of. Our daughters are becoming more expensive as they get older, so what then? Especially given one is likely to remain dependent. It may be a pinch at present but there are periods when it is more like being in a press and flattened.
Bad eh? No way when compared to some of the local farming community. Some of them are elderly with pensions, would love to sell off their land but then where would they go? Anyway, too many are outside constructible areas and there is so much land on offer that some really good sites have apparently had the signs up for over 10 years during which time the m² price slips down and down. The bit of produce they sell fetches low prices in terms of inputs, so that gives them some cash in hand for a while but because it is generally known and communes know, the cronyism people imagine that means they do not pay taxes, etc does not exist because the communes need every Euro revenue they can get. Rural unemployment is shocking too. Villages and small towns are similarly hit, the number of them with no, few or a declining number of shops epitomises that, ditto restaurants, accommodation and other once profitable services.
Sure, we feel the pinch but we also look around and try to help some of our neighbours when we can. Our plight is sometimes bad but their's is often worse.
I can only conclude then that you live alone, in a tent on a plot somebody allows you to use rent free, eat what grows around you, have no need for any kind of power or fuel, therefore no kind of vehicle that needs maintenance (or parts if you do it it yourself) and is not insured anyway, your health is perfect so no medical costs and this post was done on somebody else's machine. Then I agree.
If by living 'off the grid' means you are avoiding paying social security, health, taxes and so on then one day you will possibly discover the demerits of trying to do that ad perpetuam. The bill for hospitalisation for even a silly little accident if you tot up things from SAMU through to the actual hospital bill without cover will do for you.
Our village doctor retired and they could not find a French one so tempted in a Roumanian one. He got free house rental for a while, a new surgery at the tax payer's expense and I dare say some other sweeteners to get him here. They had to guarantee a number of patients a day or he's free to leave at which point the money spent is potentially wasted. There is a group practice in the next village with three doctors as an alternative. A nearby village also got a Roumanian in but he recently scapered at week's notice leaving patients high and dry. I wonder if the doctors being given these perks declare the perks as benefits in kind?
Thanks for this information. Do you know where I can find out how this evaluation is calculated.
Mairie? What should I ask for?
Thanks again.
Do you happen to know if a retired person over 70 who is owner of a maison secondaire would have the same exemption as a local person, if the expat is a European Union citizen?
Good grief, my student daughter's studio flat in Bordeaux, all 14m2 of it, costs more than that in rent per year. And then add on food, transport, books, stationery, household necessities eg loo roll... she doesn't have a television or a landline etc
Taxe d'habitation, like the impôts fonciers, varies according to where you live, what the commune are charging you for eg rubbish collection, what size your house is, how it is equipped eg swimming pool, outbuildings that could be lived in etc etc, who lives in it (a single parent with dependent children or a retired person over a certain age don't pay the same as a couple who work) impôts fonciers again depend on what sort of land you have, how much of it you have, where it is & is done with it. Your family situation & age don't have any imapct on what you pay.
A retired person in a small flat with no garden, in a place with few amenities or basic communal services will pay much less taxe d'habitation than the same person in the same flat somewhere with a lot of touristy infrastructure, schools etc.
It's a mix over here in Normandie, quite high unemployment but there are definite signs of wealth if you look around. My next door neighbour has a gardener in 3 times a week and a housekeeper that sorts the house and animals out. My neighbour has her own Radio Clinic so all salaries are tax deductable for her, she works very long hours between her clinic and the hospital leaves at 6.30 in the morning and returns after 8pm and only really has the weekend to enjoy her home, and there are many professionals that live this way. They pay exhorbitant taxes on profits and you hear the rumblings at how they are holding the economy afloat, the middle classes in all countries don't really change much.In the country (paysane) or just the more rural areas people just get on with it a few animals, veggie gardens fruit trees all bolster everyday finances and make a little go a long way. I don't drink and only smoke a packet of tobacco in a week, I buy my filters and papers in the UK pound shops in 6 month quantities making vast savings on the french prices and tobacco comes in from Belgium via the UK. For me as a proprietaire the tax fonciere is hard but I pay it monthly, apparently I don't earn enough to pay tax habitation but just about everything is taxed one way or another. I buy meat when it's half price or less and special offers all go in the big freezer and I can get very creative with half a chicken and feed 5 if I put it in a pie, I throw very little away. With a take home salary of 580 euros and an invalidity pension of 270 euros I have to make a little go a long way. If I was unemployed I'd be on a lot more but I'm happy to work as long as I can although at the last calculation 68 years might be a bit hard going. Life is what you make it I'm never going to be rich financially but I have a rich life and that's fine by me.
Points well made Gerald. Personally I think more than that on wine let alone any other necessities. My taxe fonciere and hab come to almost as much. Yet I don't live a lavish lifetsyle. Advertisements for spartan lifetyles do not appeal. Self chastisement would surely follow.
Catharine, which amount is the poverty line, €8,450 a year or €987 a month? In my year there are 12 months which makes €987 a month worth €11,844 a year, quite a difference.
Simon, you claim to live on just 250 euros a month. So you do not run a car, you do not have any electricity, you carry no obligatory insurance on your house, you do not have any phone connections or adsl, you have no health insurance, you grow and rear all your own food. Am I correct in these assumptions ? You also find no need to speak the language of the country you live in, is that also correct ? (It is what you stated in a previous post)