Community leaders met this week to learn about what, beyond money, those living in generational poverty need to succeed

This week, community leaders from a wide swath of sectors met to learn more about living in generational poverty from an expert, Treasure McKenzie. McKenzie knows about poverty not only because she’s the director of Bridges Out of Poverty, a program by aha! Process, Inc. that works to reduce the social costs of poverty by creating a common language between different sectors of the community, she also grew up in generational poverty herself.

To learn more about generational poverty, how it’s defined, how it’s different from situational poverty, and its prevalence in Michigan, read the Michigan Commission on Community Action and Economic Opportunity 2015 Generational Poverty Report.

McKenzie explained to the group of CEOs, superintendents, HR directors, bankers, detectives, and business leaders —who all voluntarily participated— that those who live in generational poverty tend to value their relationships with others first, before achievements like degrees or promotions.

“That’s how you end up with names like Treasure,” she said.

McKenzie traveled to Houghton from Muskogee, Oklahoma, where the Bridges Out of Poverty program is well-established, with a series of classes and help for people with dental, legal and auto issues. She came at the request and with the financial support of the Portage Health Foundation.

“Poverty intertwines with almost everything we’re trying to do,” PHF Director Kevin Store told the group before the program began.

He said that BOP aligns with PHF’s mission to address the social determinants of health, and that’s why launching a local effort was important. The goal is for groups to start “silo-busting” and work together to address more of the root causes of poverty.

McKenzie said BOP is often associated with budgeting classes.

“That’s not what I do,” she said. “It’s not about budgeting.”

They do offer some “Getting Ahead” classes to those living in poverty that focus on learning how to make connections, navigate some of society’s hidden rules, and make planning choices, but about half of the education they do is actually for business owners and the middle class, working to dispel common misconceptions about poverty and the people living in it.

When those living in poverty, or the ‘under resourced’, as the program often calls them, join in BOP classes, they are called investigators, because they inform the organization’s work with their own life experiences.

McKenzie said that generational poverty in particular can be kind of like an addiction, and the person dealing with it may not be able to see the way out for themselves. Admonishments to “just do better” in some way are not going to help them.

“I call it being ‘should’ on,” McKenzie said.

Suggesting they should get a job, move away from a bad relationship, or work harder isn’t effective, but more money, in general, won’t necessarily be either. Generational poverty is about more than just money. It’s about resources which can include the financial, but also emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, relational, and perhaps most importantly, it can be about the hidden rules in a middle-class-focused society that someone didn’t learn growing up.

“You only know what you know,” McKenzie said.

Banks, schools, government buildings and more work on a set of middle-class norms that can be unfamiliar and unwelcoming to those from generational poverty, making access to a variety of opportunities and services uncomfortable at best.

It’s also not that those in poverty aren’t willing to work hard.

As an example, McKenzie shared a video about a woman named Tammy, who walks ten miles to her job at Burger King, and her sons.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Tammy says.

McKenzie pointed out there were things in the video that money wouldn’t fix, particularly the family issues; lack of a father figure for the sons, and the social strain between Matt and his mother and brother caused by Matt’s shame of his living situation, the lack of recognition from passersby at her job, and more.

The documentary checks in with Tammy again 14 years later.

The group also explored the ‘mental models’ of those living with poverty, in the middle class, or in wealth. Mental models are internal pictures of what things look like to us and determine how we act, often without our examination. There’s also a limited amount of space inside a mental model.

BOP’s mental model of poverty centers on relationships and includes things like food, childcare, time spent at agencies, jobs, legal issues, safety, mental health and chemical dependency, and housing. Accessible businesses in the neighborhood probably include pawn shops, fast food, check cashing services, dollar stores, and laundromats.

In the middle class, the mental model focuses on achievement and includes things like social media, childcare, careers, mortgage payments, long working hours, clubs and groups, mental health and chemical dependency, health and prevention, and vacations. The neighborhood probably has banks, bookstores, coffee shops, and office buildings.

There is some overlap, but those in poverty are focused on much more immediate needs and have less time and mental “bandwidth” to focus on planning for the future.

McKenzie explained that being able to construct a “future story” is a luxury of the middle class and wealthy because their immediate needs are usually taken care of. Those living in poverty have to deal with the “tyranny of the moment”, which is shorthand for the immediately necessary survival needs like food, shelter and safety. Even simple things like staying clean by doing laundry can take half of a day when a parent has to use a laundromat, doesn’t have access to childcare, and lacks transportation. This can lead to decisions that may seem wrong or bad to those living outside poverty.

One example McKenzie offered was the purchasing of an expensive TV. To someone in the middle class looking at someone impoverished, they may wonder why they wouldn’t use that money to fix something on their car or house, or to pay off debt. However, to someone in generational poverty, those problems are endless, and watching TV is the only vacation they ever get.

McKenzie said buying a television they may not “need” isn’t a moral or financial decision for those in generational poverty.

“It’s a mental health decision,” she said.

McKenzie led the group through several exercises designed to help them understand the behavior and decisions made by people living in generational poverty. She said it’s important that those in poverty, the middle class, and the wealthy learn to communicate better because it takes all three to make meaningful policy changes that will lift the community as a whole up.

Those making the policies are mostly the wealthy, and those making hiring and business decisions are most often middle-class, but if those policies and decisions aren’t informed by the realities of those living in and near poverty, then they can work against themselves.

McKenzie related the story of one business owner who, after attending one of her classes, made note of how many good employees he’d let go for being late to work because of strict company policy when often the conditions of their tardiness were outside of their control because of public transportation or family issues. A change in policy, or a little flexibility, could have saved him from the costly process of finding and training new employees.

Government policies that prevent agencies from sharing information with each other force people looking for needs-based help to spend time filling out paperwork, again and again, to prove they are poor to different agencies, a process that is both time-consuming and sometimes humiliating. A shift in policy to allow some information sharing could afford someone more time to look for work or cook healthy food.

“Think about having someone from all three circles when you start making decisions,” McKenzie said.

At the end of the meeting, small discussions were seeded about what policy changes and partnerships might be meaningful as the program moves forward.

Store said, at the end of the meeting, that bringing about measurable results would likely take at least 5 years, but that bringing about systems change for those in generational poverty was important to the health of the community, too.

“They’re very much hand-in-glove issues,” he said.

BOP has found that meaningful, long-lasting change only seems to be truly affected on a family-by-family basis, and so it takes time to take hold in a community, but they’ve calculated that in Muskogee alone they’ve saved the cost of social services more than $1 million, among other benefits like a larger, more stable workforce.

“We need to take a longer length look,” Store said.