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The Minimum social garanti is a social assistance scheme established in 2019 in the city of Grande-Synthe, in the north of France. Its main goal was first for the municipal executive “to eradicate poverty” in the city by offering an income supplement that would raise the resources of the beneficiary households to the poverty threshold, fixed at 50% of the median income. The use of a statistical and substantialist approach of poverty, in order to redefine the municipality’s aid allocation, has been confronted to the way agents of local social services see their users’ support. The qualitative survey work conducted between March 2018 and October 2021 provides information on how poverty, its dynamics and its heterogeneous characteristics can be differently apprehended by confronting the statistical approach recommended by the municipal executive to the practices and resistance of social service agents.