Advocates learn to live poor

A self-imposed, three-week stay below the poverty level has left two Salt Lake advocates for the poor counting some new blessings: The splendor of milk being poured on a bowl of cereal, the redemptive power of a new roll of toilet paper, the serenity of not going to bed hungry.

"Most of us can't even remember the last time we were hungry, let alone giving any more thought to food than what crosses our paths at the grocery store," said Shawn Teigen, who makes a "pretty modest" living by helping Utah's growing number of low-income residents help themselves.

He and Jessie Tregeagle, who is also a staff member at the Community Action Partnership of Utah, spent the past 21 days actually living like the 254,000 Utahns who somehow manage to permanently do without knowing where their next meal is coming from, where exactly they'll be living next month or if they'll ever have a job again.

Teigen, his wife and 2-year-old daughter lived on $298 the past three weeks, or at federal poverty level for a family of three, $18,310. Tregeagle made it on $141, the amount she would have earned for that time at the $10,830 federal poverty level for a single person.

"I don't think I'd have been able to survive much longer," Tregeagle said, noting that the first thing on her list if she survived living on $6.73 a day is to get her hair done. "If I faced being poor permanently, I honestly don't think I would survive. I don't know how people manage it, but my appreciation for those who do is much deeper."

Teigen said the experience was an education, not in academics of being poor but in getting a real feel for it. A lot of people caught in the economic downturn are getting a hint of what it's like. But however hard it is for people who have less but are still among the haves, it's nothing like just trying to survive day to day with next to nothing, he said.

"What things cost becomes an obsession," said Heather Tritten, director of CAPU. "Being poor is this abiding feeling like you're always in or near a crisis. There's never enough time to do what you need to do and never enough resources to get what you need to buy."

Then to add insult to the injured, people who have never been poor or ever wondered where their next meal is coming from seem prone to blame the poor for being poor, Tritten said.

They can list assistance programs and services that they think are ready, willing and able to help, when in fact obtaining that assistance ranges from extremely difficult to impossible. The notion that all kinds of help is just waiting out there for anyone ambitious enough to ask may make a lot of people feel better, but it's more hope than reality, she said.