Poverty Sim: Walk in My Shoes

Why am I interested in the poor?

First, I've been pretty poor at times, getting closer to the fire than I ever dreamed. Imagine Star Trek's Enterprise skimming the outer edge of a planet's atmosphere, feeling the heat, but pulling out just before being burned to a cinder. That's me and poverty. I've never really  had to land on that planet, live its culture, get wet from its rains, experience the upheavals of its plate tectonics. I've just skimmed. My parents were poor and I was raised poor, but Mom and Dad managed (through hard work and amazing self-sacrifice) to keep the nose of the ship just above the re-entry burn.

Second, I live in an impoverished rural area and work with low-income families. I am curious about the values and practices that are common to my home. And, from study (thank you, Ruby Payne) and observation, I see that most of the "help" that is applied to my region is misguided and sometimes damaging. There's nothing like help that feels like a smack in the face or that makes no allowance for local conditions, desires. My favorite image for the help applied to Appalachian communities is butter spread on cold toast. It just don't soak in. Interventions must be guided from within, not smeared on from without. Low-income people will tell us what they need. Will we listen?

Third, I am aware of my own good fortune and assets. My mind is good. I went to college. I have people who care about me. I have enough--I can move to the next level, enhancement. At the same time, I am aware that I am about two months away from full-blown poverty if I lose my job, need expensive medicines, or add a child to my household.

Fourth, humans have always been explorers, and I hope to be part of that long tradition. As a writer of fiction and non-fiction, I see that each person is his or her own planet, developed in response to very specific conditions; and yet we are all part of a phenomenal spider web of connection and commonality. (Thanks, Darwin.) If you would cross a concert harp with a spider web, you'd get a sense of the concerto of interdependence I'm talking about.

So, exploring other person-worlds and community-worlds and walking in the moccasins, pumps, trainers, wing-tips, steel-toes, flip-flops, fluffy pink house shoes, and plain old bare feet of this world is my favorite hobby. And, might as well start at home, right here in poverty-stricken but incredibly rich Vinton County, Ohio. That's why I'm interested in the poor. That's why last week I attended an exercise called a poverty simulation, in which a group of non-destitute middle Americans did a guided role-play of being poor. If you ever get a chance to participate in one of these, please do it. You'll be richer for a better understanding of the poor.

About 60 people filled up the social hall of the Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Ohio, to do a sort of being-John-Malkovich slide into someone else's--a poor person's--skin. The edges of the room were lined with tables representing community entities--Job & Family Services, a bank, a daycare center, the Quicky Cash vendor, utilities, the mortgage banker, a school, a workplace, Community Action, the homeless shelter, and jail. Inside this ring of tables were chairs grouped into any number between one and six chairs.

The chairs represented families. Out in the waiting area, each attendee was given an identity card. When the doors were opened, participants searched around until they found their "home" and met their "family." Each family had a packet of information, telling them all about themselves--age, medical condition, mortgage/rent obligations, placement of children, employment status...a demographic souffle. To simulate the money spent on transportation, each family was given transportation vouchers that had to be spent at EVERY stop they made. Lots of play money floated around.

The facilitator (from the Ohio Association of Food Banks) announced that the simulation would last a month--a month of 15-minute weeks. She would blow a whistle to announce the beginning and ending of each week. If you went to school or work, you had to spend 7 minutes there each week before you could go about your business. During the month, the family was to keep itself fed and housed and serviced with utilities. Week 3 was summer break from school. (One woman lost her "job" because she couldn't find daycare for Week 3.)

The groups dug right in, sometimes talking right over the facilitator in their urgency to get a plan together, to somehow make sense of their new lives. What do we do first? How do we get baby Jill (a 50-year-old man with a full beard) to daycare? Should we go for food or for transportation first? While you go to work, I'll drop the boy off at school, pick up my unemployment check, and go pay the mortgage... Oh, their plans sounded so great, logical and clear.

Except. Meet me, Joy the mortgage banker, one of the "providers." We had packets, too, giving us a set of activities for each week in the simulation. I had a "closed" sign. I had warning notices. I could evict. The careful planning blew up when the line was long at the bank and by the time you got to my office, the "closed" sign was out and I was walking through the community handing out overdue warnings. When I got back to my place of business, I could see a participant eagerly pushing through the crush to get to me. Then the whistle blew. That's one week late on the mortgage.

The simulation was loud and pushy. Common courtesies vanished. Raised voices. Arguments over who was next in line at the bank. One of the saddest reactions I saw (several times) was tired resignation, like when I refused to take a housing voucher because they were no longer accepted after Week 2 of the month. There was no flexibility in the rules. My mortgage banker self developed more rapidly than I thought possible into a confrontive and snotty worker. By Week 4, I was (to my shame) flipping groups of chairs over with a grim glee--the signal for eviction. When the evicted participants came to me to ask what was happening, I found myself saying (with shockingly smug superiority), "You're homeless--the shelter is right down the street."

One participant started an argument over getting incorrect change at the Quick Cash place, with police involvement. The police, of course, sided with the business owner and off the cheated man went to jail. While this argument was diverting everyone's attention, another participant, without even thinking, cleaned out Quick Cash's cash drawer and tripped merrily over to me to pay the mortgage. Stealing really seemed like a rational act. The thief could feed and house her family. The man who sought traditional justice got screwed. In real-life, the thief is a respected member of the community who probably never even gets pulled over for speeding.

Several families in our group did not manage to feed their families. In fact, a couple of families had not managed to secure food for their families during the entire month. The facilitator worked her way down: who had managed to get food all four weeks; a decent number of hands went up. Three weeks out of four; a larger number of hands. Only two or one of the weeks; several hands up. No food; a smattering of hands. When the connection was made to children and families going without food for a significant amount of time each month, the whole group sobered up. This wasn't just a game about poor people--it was a regular experience for many of them.

These types of insights were happening all around the room. Even in the wrap-up, people were angry because the bank didn't have enough tellers. The simulation was still playing out inside them--the stress lasted.  It was a high blood pressure experience.

Some of my insights (these are not unique or special--most people in the group had these insights).

INSIGHT 1: Many of the behaviors associated with poor people, such as pushiness, hostility to authority, and not paying the bills on time, spring from the conditions of poverty, not from the personalities of poor people. Most of the "nice" people participating in the simulation rapidly developed these traits.

INSIGHT 2: Poor people do not have leisure time. They are our modern hunter-gatherers, always on the go, on the move, just to fill the most basic needs of their families. Poor people are either working or exhausted. Throw a parent-teacher conference into the mix and the whole structure of the week may collapse.

INSIGHT 3: Helping kids with homework (oh, those middle school "projects") and tending to your key relationships is something there is little time for. The participants I was with gasped when the facilitator asked whether they had interacted with their families in any way other than urgent problem solving. None of them had.

INSIGHT 4: A low-income or part-time job can be more of a liability than an asset--it greatly increases transportation and daycare costs and, given the structure of our business culture, may bar you from all of the activities that are only available from 8:00 to 5:00.


Conclusion and INSIGHT 5: Making assumptions is a human way to simplify the data each of us deals with in our lives--but assumptions make an ass out of u and mptions. Please add imagination to your assumptions--try on someone's dollar flip-flops and see how it feels. Sign up for a poverty simulation. Read any book by Ruby Payne. We can't afford to write off a whole group of people--any group. Put your "ass" in compassion instead of assumption.