MIDDLETOWN — Being poor can just wear a person to a frazzle.


Nearly two dozen volunteer "poor people" learned that lesson Thursday at a poverty simulation at SUNY Orange.

They were run through the economic hoops and alleys that working poor people negotiate when they don't earn enough for life's necessities.

"This is not a game," Kim McMann, training coordinator for the New York State Community Action Association, told the participants. "This is a simulation of real life. There are more than 40,000 people in Orange County living in poverty."

Volunteers assumed different names and scenarios: singles, extended families, young, old. Others were designated as social service workers, bankers, pawnbrokers, check-cashing clerks, supermarket managers, utility company workers and police.

Laurie Mulvaney, director of programs and services for Safe Homes of Orange County, became 85-year-old Stella Smith, homeless because her monthly $552 retirement check no longer covered rent. She bounced between social service providers, picking up a scanty food voucher and getting a bed in a shelter.

"She told me I should sell my burial plot because it was an asset," Mulvaney said of a caseworker.

"Part of what we're doing is sensitizing our staff to what people go through," explained Charles Darden, executive director of the Regional Economic Community Action Program in Middletown. "You have to make the staff aware of what it's like" to be poor.

Living in poverty in New York can mean a family of four having an income of about $23,500, said Karla Digirolamo, CEO of the Community Action Association.

Thursday's exercise mostly simulated the lives of people working at least part time in an economy with a shrinking supply of full-time jobs.

"An unexpected event like a car breaking down can be a crisis," Digirolamo said. "Where do they get the $250?"

The event drew volunteers from social service providers, Newburgh Free Academy and several businesses.

Orange County Legislators Christopher Eachus, D-New Windsor; and Matt Turnbull, D-Hamptonburgh; made the rounds, as did social services Commissioner David Jolly.

Eachus, aka Quentin Quant, and his "family" debated which bills to pay.

"We live hand-to-mouth," he explained. "We need to be educated about what bills we pay now, and which ones we can hold off. If I make a mistake, it will cost the family. There won't be food on the table. We won't get the car fixed."

The "police" were summoned when belongings were stolen from a shelter, and when "Kayley Quant," daughter of Quentin, was suspected of abandoning her baby at a childcare center.

The cuffs came off when Kayley, played by Virginia Oberholtzer, a Safe Homes family and youth advocate, explained she was late getting to the center because she lacked reliable transportation.

Jean Sexton, branch manager for Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union, morphed into Grandma Knowles. "When you don't have a credit card, problems aren't as easy to solve," Sexton said of unexpected expenses. Her "family" was trying to trim a $400 deficit threatening the monthly budget.

Some volunteers had medical issues. Cost was always on their minds.

"You spend all of your time running around just to survive; you can't do anything else," observed Jolly, aka Charles Chen, seeking to forestall a utility shutoff.