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February 15, 2017OWATONNA — St. Mary’s students in grades seven and eight gained some perspective on homelessness during a poverty simulation earlier this week.
Students were given identities, then had to seek out housing during the project, which was conducted at St. Joseph Parish Tuesday, with a goal of finding a place to stay each night. There were seven possibilities, ranging from shelters to homes, but each had different criteria, and students were often denied or put on a waiting list due to either a scarcity of openings or because they failed to meet various demands.
For example, some shelters were gender-specific, while others had conditions like being drug-free for at least six months, said teacher Chris Smith. At his station, for instance, applicants “had to be able to contribute,” which meant he had to deny many of those with mental illnesses or physical disabilities.
“We are doing a unit on poverty right now, so this was a perfect fit for us,” said Smith, who teaches junior high students.
This was the first time his students have attempted a simulation like this, and it was the suggestion of Ellen Heydon, community engagement coordinator for Habitat for Humanity.
“We want to raise awareness about affordable housing,” Heydon said. There’s a shortage of such units not just in Owatonna, but nationwide.
The U.S. has a shortage of 7.2 million affordable rental units available to extremely low income (ELI) — those with income 30 percent or less than their area’s median — renter households, according to a 2016 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In other words, there were 31 affordable and available units per 100 ELI renter households.
In addition, for the 4.1 million deeply low income (DLI) renters — households at or below 15 percent of the area’s median income — there was a shortage of 3.4 million affordable and available rental units, according to the NLIHC. There were only 17 affordable and available rental units per 100 DLI households.
Heydon hopes demonstrations like the one Tuesday can create an atmosphere “where we can talk about affordable housing openly,” she said. It also can build empathy in students for the condition of homelessness.
As they were turned down for various options, students learned “it’s a cruel world,” said seventh-grader Noah Hodgman. Cast in the simulation as a 28-year-old single female with an annual income of $2,500 and without a high school degree, he could find refuge only in women’s shelters and public housing.
Some of his classmates had even lower chances of landing roofs over their heads.
Damian Boubin, for example, only found a place to stay — a women’s shelter — one time in his first four nights, he said. As a 35-year-old female former factory worker now making $8,000 year, “it’s harder than it seems” to find a place to stay, and “you have to get there super fast” because beds fill up quickly.
Drew Randall learned the latter lesson the hard way, as despite being first in line at a women’s shelter two days in a row, he only found a roof over his head one night of his first four, he said. He played a 53-year-old woman who completed only 11th grade, is currently unemployed, and is attempting to subsist on $6,400 a year.
