To better understand, they walk in their shoes
Students 'experience' desperation, indignities of being destitute
This is a month in the life.
First week: Felicia Fuentes, 30-year-old mom to two teenagers, slogs through welfare paperwork. At school, her kids are forced to sit on the floor and watch as classmates are hauled out for drug possession.
Second week: Mom returns to the welfare office. Kids can't get to class; no money for transportation. They haven't eaten, either.
Third week: Teens steal a camera and a stereo system. Mom pawns a chest for $50.
Fourth week: Still no welfare. House foreclosed. Mom and kids out on the street.
"It's incredibly frustrating," said 22-year-old Amanda Szymczuk, donning Fuentes's identity and heavy load during a recent poverty simulation at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. "The situation my family has been left in is so hopeless."
They came in Abercrombie & Fitch jeans and wildcat-emblazoned sweat shirts, mostly white, mostly kids from middle-class or upper middle-class families planning to go on to careers in social service jobs.
But for 80 minutes, they put on more tattered personas; they struggled. They felt frustration and hopelessness, and became exasperated with bureaucracy.
This was the life of poverty, as portrayed in an annual simulation hosted by UNH's departments of family studies and social work.
"Poverty is not a game for the millions of Americans who live it every day," said facilitator Elizabeth Dolan, associate professor of family studies. "Just think how it would feel if you did this all the time."
There's evidence that more people are.
The number of New Hampshire families receiving food stamps jumped from 29,315 in September 2007 to 32,662 this past September, according to Terry Smith, director for the division of family assistance at the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services.
Over the same period, the number of those on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families rose from 4,927 to 5,074.
Smith explained that when the economy goes sour, it takes food stamp statistics a couple of years to reflect a change. "We've only begun to see this thing," he said.
Lives moved quickly in the UNH exercise; the simulation lasted for an 80-minute "month" split into 20-minute "weeks." A ringing bell signaled the end of each week; the group of 80 to 90 students then cycled back to their "houses," separated into quadrangles or triangles of seats, marked ironically with "Home Sweet Home."
Lined along the walls were all the services the families would require: a bank, a school, a grocery store, a childcare center, an employment office, a pawn shop, welfare, a police department, a work site, a utility office, and a mortgage and rent collector.
The students, mostly juniors and seniors, were given names and some played the roles of moms, teenagers, and toddlers; a few were even senior citizens. Most families had monthly bills between $1,000 and $1,200 - creating a wide gap between their average monthly incomes of about $500 to $700, gained from Social Security, welfare, and minimum-wage jobs.
One elderly pair received a $767 Social Security check - 10 percent of which went straight to the check-cashing office. To get by, they "winged" a day-care business for their neighbors, stole $100 from their landlord, and sold bus passes for twice their face value.
"You're just overwhelmed by how alone you feel," said Nicollette Thomson, a 26-year-old from Kingston who took on the identity of a 72-year-old woman with diabetes. "It's an intense feeling when you don't have enough money."
Elsewhere, the jail was half full, mostly with teenagers; the pawn shop line was a dozen deep; the classrooms lacked seats.
"Our school is awful," said 15-year-old Francisca Fuentes - portrayed by 20-year-old Katie Cameron of Bedford, N.H. She explained that there aren't any field trips, there's no nurse, and students have to pay for all of their supplies.
At that very moment, another 15-year-old (actually 22-year-old Kacie Farrell of Hooksett, who aspires to be a children's speech therapist) was suddenly hauled out of class by a female police officer for drug possession.
"I'd be quite embarrassed, probably ashamed," the petite brunette said when asked how she'd feel if something like this really happened.
As she sat down at the "jail," she looked around the swarm. "I wonder where my mother is now?"
Unluckily for her, mom didn't end up bailing her out for two weeks; she was overwhelmed with trying to obtain food stamps and bus passes and applying for jobs.
"It's hectic, crazy," said 20-year-old Shikara Thody, from Woodstock, Vt., who was clasping a food stamp card, $2 in cash, five bus passes, an ID, and social security cards.
Nearby, at the welfare office, paperwork was piling up. Six two-sided forms for Szymczuk, the welfare mother who spent an hour - or three weeks - filling them out and waiting in line to meet with a case worker.
This was her story: deserter husband who left heavy debts and $10 in cash, three-room house before foreclosure, and two teenage kids, including a ninth-grade dropout. Budget: $800 for rent, $295 for utilities, $440 for food. Income: $0.
Despite her situation, the social services people were "so unsupportive, so unenthused," she said.
Pawn shop clerks even made her play rock-paper-scissors with another hard-up mom to determine whose chest of drawers they would buy.
But they had to be that way; otherwise, it wouldn't be realistic, noted those who took on the public assistance roles.
Justine Shea, for one, described her welfare office receptionist character as "trying to be helpful, but she isn't that bright."
A worker at the nonprofit Rockingham Community Action, Shea has seen enough families go through the merry-go-round. "It's a nightmare," she said, shaking her head, as she sat at a long table stacked with a rainbow of forms. "A total nightmare."
Szymczuk had always heard as much; but until now, she'd never really understood.
"It's very clear how difficult it is to just get started," she said, a pile of paperwork threatening to overflow her lap.
"I don't know what to do with the kids; we owe everybody money. I have to figure it all out."
But after 80 minutes, resolved or not, it was over.
The family scenarios got packed back into boxes for next year, the food stamp cards and IDs thrown out, the social services disbanded.
The students, back in their own lives, filed out to warm residence halls and cars, a bit more sympathetic, a bit more humble. 