by Monica Palmer
Some people chose beaches and luxury for Spring Break, but I chose snow and poverty.
This past Monday, as snow began to fall in Kansas City, I prepared to play the part of a person in poverty during a Missouri Association for Community Action (MACA) “poverty simulation.” MACA developed this exercise as a way for community members to walk a mile in the shoes of low income individuals and prompt a dialogue about the daily struggles of the poor.
At registration, I signed in and got my name tag. From the tag I learned I was a 36 year-old man named Kris Knowles. Next, I met my family. In real life they were three professional women, but in the simulation, they became my wife, my mother and my 15 year-old daughter.
When we opened our family packet, we discovered that I was the only full-time worker in the family, my wife was unemployed, my mother was disabled, and my daughter attended school and worked part time.
The simulation was to be broken down into four 15-minute weeks in the life of our family. Our simulation leader, gave us a “tour” around the room, pointing out the different resource stations. There was a general employer (where I would go for my work), a school, a daycare, a grocery store, a pawn shop, a jail, an interfaith center, and a payday loan shop. There were even helpful resources like a Community Action office and Department of Social Services office. In order to “travel” to any of these stations, we needed to have a transportation pass, which represented the gas for our vehicle or a bus ticket in the real world. My family had 6 transportation passes to start off our first week, and we learned we could buy more at the payday loan place.
Our leader informed us that we had two goals: 1) Keep or find a place to live and 2) Pay all your bills. Simple.
Honestly, I felt pretty optimistic about our situation, because it seemed tight but manageable. My full-time work brought in $310/week after taxes and my mother got a monthly disability check of $330. We already had a roof over our head, and our housing costs with mortgage, taxes and maintenance was a modest $630/month. Utilities added $275 and we had a car payment of $200. Our budget for food was $110/week, and it was offset slightly by the $210/month our family received in SNAP (food stamp) benefits. We also had to factor in $230/month for prescriptions, clothing and miscellaneous.
Some quick calculation showed that we had enough to cover our budgeted items with $6 remaining. However, that did not take into account buying transportation passes. We did have a few items that we could sell to the pawn shop: a stereo, a microwave, and a TV. Selling the stereo for $100 was our emergency plan that would enable us to make it through this month, but I figured if my wife could just get a job, we’d be doing fine.
Week one began, and I dashed off to work, surrendering 5 of our 6 transportation passes, because I needed to “pay” for five days of driving to work. My daughter took the school bus to school, and my wife took the remaining transportation pass to cash my mother’s disability check, buy more transportation passes, get food and look for work. Also, we did not have a checking account, so all of our bills had to be paid in person, so my wife had to take care of that too.
We quickly learned that time was almost as important as money when it came to resources. My wife had to budget money, time and transportation costs. There simply wasn’t enough time to get it all done, so she had to prioritize and make some tough choices. Even though my wife was unemployed, she worked just as hard as I did. Every week she was rushing around and standing in lines looking for work, caring for my disabled mother and managing our financial affairs while I was at work. I attempted to help out after work, but the bank and resource offices closed shortly after I got off work, so my wife was carrying a heavy load.
During week three, we finally had enough cash saved up to go and pay our mortgage and utilities, but my wife was robbed. With that one unexpected event, our plan crumbled. We got evicted from our home and had to move into the homeless shelter. We felt defeated. We worked so hard, and in one fell swoop, we were worse off than we started.
At the end of the simulation, my family and I managed to get our house back by pawning everything we owned. We failed to pay all of our bills; my wife and I neglected our daughter, because there just wasn’t time for good parenting; and we went without purchasing food for most of the month.
It amazed me how quickly food got bumped down our priority list. I wonder, though, how easily it would be to forego the food if we had actually felt the physical pangs of hunger and experienced the energy drain and anxiety that food insecurity produces. Now, more than ever, I know how important it is for low income families to have access to nutritious food. Without SNAP and food banks to provide a safety net, these families would lack the fuel they need to fight for their lives.
My simulation family was not lazy. We gave it our all to make ends meet, but we just couldn’t seem to catch up, much less get ahead. The bills were always due before the money was earned, and we couldn’t get on top of them. I now understand how low income people succumb to the payday loan trap.
My simulation family was not ignorant about budgeting and finances. We had a plan. Of course, with no savings or back up, our survival plan was brought to a halt by a robbery. Other families in the simulation had obstacles like pregnancy, incarceration, addiction, dependent family members, childcare issues, and medical conditions. This simulation did a good job of illustrating how American families who live paycheck to paycheck are just one or two unexpected events away from total ruin.
Ultimately, the saddest reality of this simulation is that poverty is not a game. There are 38.1 million real Americans living below the poverty line right now. In 2013, that line was at $23,550 for a family of four. In Missouri 16.2% of our population is living below this level. These people do not get to leave their struggles behind at the end of the day, because their struggle is not pretend. It is real, and it is hard.
Open your eyes to the reality of poverty by participating in a poverty simulation. Click here for more information.