The homes are represented by four chairs squared. Surrounding the homes are retail stores, a bank, a pharmacy and a pawn shop along with social services locations and a jail. The money, vouchers and bus passes are all fake. All were part of a poverty simulation put on by Texas Tech’s Health Sciences Center faculty and students as part of a summit on hunger on the South Plains at Covenant Health System’s Knipling Education Center.
Becky Geist, an assistant professor at the HSC’s school of nursing who led and helped organize the simulation, says the point of it is to try to convey some of poverty’s burdens.
“A lot of times we don’t understand what homeless means, or what living in poverty means and how that effects people,” Geist says. “So, when you go through this poverty simulation, you hopefully come away with a little empathy and maybe even figure out a way, how you can help your community.”
For many people and families, poverty is an everyday reality. Until one has experienced it, poverty is difficult to truly understand. Participants in the simulation played roles. Each resident of a home is given a sheet of paper that detailed their current financial and health circumstances. This is a portion of one resident’s plight.
“Your husband has just disappeared and you’re left to pay the monthly bills. He left you with ten dollars in cash and nothing in the bank and you have no income. You need to find a job as soon as possible and apply for cash benefits, housing, food stamps and other benefits at the social services agency.”
Inside Texas Tech: Genetic Predisposition to Cancer
Peter Laverty, director of Seniors Are Special at University Medical Center, played the role of an 85-year-old widow whose monthly income is just $552; often she struggled to have enough for food.
“This person has enough money to pay her bills, she doesn’t have enough money to really live anywhere else besides that,” he explains. “So, she’s isolated, she lives at home, she gets that one check a month, so she’s got to figure out where to pay and who to pay and what is most important. Transportation is really going to be hard. We assume she lives on a bus line. Most folks in Lubbock don’t live on a bus line. She has no other transportation. She has no family members. So, how does she get to the bus?”
Geist has done poverty simulations since 2014, doing as many as six a year. A week before this simulation, she did one for school nurses in the Lubbock district. The program she uses, and where she was trained as a facilitator, was created by the Missouri Association for Community Action.
The simulation, Geist says, helps policy makers, local community leaders, students and organizations. Those in healthcare benefit as well.
“A lot of the students had told me that they understand now what it is that they need to do when their patients are being discharged to make sure that they follow up and say, ‘ok are you going to be able to go to the grocery store and get this, this and this? Are you going to be able to go to the pharmacy and get these prescriptions? Can ya’ll afford them?’ That kind of thing,” Geist says.
Before the simulation started, participants were uncertain how the program would be done. That sense of uncertainty, Geist says, is part of what those in poverty often feel. For the simulation, a month of life was condensed – 15 minutes equaled a week, seven minutes equaled a full-time job and four minutes for a part-time worker.
This helped participants experience how trying time constraints are for those living in poverty. James Kuehl, a father who is a college student, brought his three children – ages 8, 10 and 16.
“It’s good for them to see where we’re coming from when I tell them we don’t have a lot of money you know,” Kuehl says. “I thought it would be cool for them to actually see it in a controlled environment.”
Geist says the Lubbock area does a good job helping those in need. But more could likely be done as there are some duplication of efforts.
“Sometimes we have duplicate things. Duplicate programs. So I think if we could all figure out, all on the same page, I think our communities might be healthier and might be more successful.”
