Fifty million Americans live in poverty. For those people, one sideways step, one sprained ankle, or one forgotten payment can mean the loss of a home, a hungry infant, or a panicked stop at a pawn shop.
On April 10, 2014, Healthy King County Coalition workshop participants soon walked this narrow ridge themselves. As part of a poverty simulation, each participant was assigned to a “family” of specific identities and scenarios that match what people in lower incomes experience every day. They visited “stations” to attend work, stay sheltered, feed themselves and their families, and pay all their bills.
One participant was fired after the first week of the four-week simulation because he had no transportation to get to work, forcing the family to rely on less than $500 a month in social service benefits. Another family was evicted quickly despite their frantic efforts to prioritize the chaos of bills.
Long lines, locked doors, unscrupulous vendors, crushing debt, and a confusing maze of social services that may or may not help combine to make daily living a series of Hobson’s choices for many in poverty: take it or leave it, and either way you lose. “How completely demotivating it was to be shut out of every option,” said one participant.
Poverty offers little sense of adventure or frivolity, even in a simulation. Participants reported feeling confused and even powerless as they tried repeatedly to navigate the system—a system that’s more of a box than a ladder or hand up. Ethics became slippery for both the families in need and the volunteers playing the role of resource gatekeepers. A volunteer acting the role of an employer found himself paying less than his employee was entitled to, much to his own dismay.
“We want people to stop asking the ‘why do they do that?’ questions,” said simulation coordinator Martha Aitken, senior associate at WSU Extension. People in poverty make decisions that look unwise from the outside but make sense in context. If you earn $12,000 a year, you might choose to forego medicine for yourself because you need that cash to pay the electricity bill, even though foregoing that medicine sends you to the ER.
Later in the day, Darlene Flynn at the City of Seattle Office of Civil Rights discussed the intersection of race and poverty: however you slice the contributors toward poverty (health issues, infant mortality rates, criminal justice system involvement), racial disparities exist on top of economic inequalities. To not address inequity is to waste our money and to fail repeatedly with our policies and systems, according to Darlene.
“I think it’s important as we continue our work in health equity to remember that it’s part of a more complex challenge. These issues, like homelessness and low wages, are symptoms of the larger problems of racism and poverty,” said Val Thomas-Matson, HKCC project manager.
Several MSW students along with local social service providers and community members attended the training. The event was funded and planned by the Healthy King County Coalition.