Poverty simulation offers ‘eye-opening’ experience for Silicon Valley leaders

In the echoing expanse of a Sunnyvale food bank, Silicon Valley leaders scrambled across a warehouse floor, making a dull cacophony as they ran to different tables where they begged for work, bargained for groceries, sought housing, and bailed their loved ones out of jail.

The desperate group of business leaders and public workers hadn’t suddenly fallen on hard times, rather each was playing a role as part of a poverty simulation – an experience designed to help participants understand what it is like to face poverty. While the event was only a few hours, those who attended say it is a powerful tool for understanding how those with little try to survive in the heart of wealthy Silicon Valley.

“It’s an eye-opening experience. It illuminates what happens invisibly here in our county,” said Eric Rodriguez of Leadership Sunnyvale, who took part in the simulation. “I think more people, more organizations need to do this.”

The poverty simulation has a decades-long history, going back to a religious group in St. Louis that advocated for those in poverty, Reform Organization of Welfare. In the ‘70s, the group created a simulation to show participants the experience of living on welfare. Over the years, the exercise was adapted by various groups to suit changing contexts and geographies, including those at Sunnyvale Community Services and their partners.

The local context of staggering inequality makes the exercise even more important, said Scott Myers-Lipton, a professor emeritus of sociology at San Jose State University, who wasn’t involved in last week’s exercise.

Myers-Lipton, who did poverty simulations with his students for decades, points to analyses that show that nearly one in three households in Silicon Valley can’t afford food shelter and utilities without nonprofit or government assistance. At the same time, a mere 9 people hold 15% of all wealth in Silicon Valley, according to the 2025 Silicon Valley Index report.

In a warehouse food pantry earlier this month, members of the Leadership Sunnyvale and Leadership Mountain View – programs that offer leadership development for locals – took part in the poverty simulation. The attendees were grouped into circles of chairs representing families, with each person given an individual role – like a single parent, a child working to help support their family or an elderly person trying to find services. Together, the families were tasked with staying intact and to remain housed with whatever resources they were given for four 15-minute rounds representing the four weeks in a month.

Around the edge of the room, different tables stood in for the panoply of systems and services that each family was to navigate – a workplace, social services, a school, a homeless shelter, a bank, and other agencies all staffed by people who previously faced poverty or homelessness in real life.

Each round saw the families scurry across the room to pay rent, pay off loans and rush to school and work. Some waited in line for social services only to be turned elsewhere. Others pawned jewelry to help pay their bills.

Within a few rounds, several families began to fray: children left alone while their parents worked were taken by Child Protective Services, a few opted to steal when money wasn’t enough – some were caught and jailed. At the end of the month, many of the families could not make rent, and their chairs were turned over, a bold “EVICTED” sign laid on top. Participants looked in shock as they grabbed their belongings and left to find the homeless shelter.

After the exercise, several in the room reflected on what they called an “eye opening” experience. Many felt powerless and frustrated after waiting in lines only to get rejected aid or because they didn’t have enough money to pay a bill.

Many who lived through poverty and homelessness said that frustration mirrors their own real life experiences. Debrina Tenorio, 54, who ran the “shelter” in the simulation, was homeless for nearly ten years before recently finding housing. But even as she worked and tried to get assistance, she would often run into hurdles because an office closed earlier than expected or there wasn’t available space.

“It’s very frustrating. It was the same thing over and over and over … trying to work and be homeless at the same time – It was like a job in itself,” said Tenorio. “I want people to understand what it was like and just the struggles that I had to go through.”

Changes at the federal level will likely make some of those struggles even harder. Last year’s sweeping tax bill introduced requirements that could kick thousands off of SNAP benefits, while expiring healthcare subsidies are leading to more expensive premiums for health insurance.

Amid that political context and the inequality of Silicon Valley, poverty simulations offer an opportunity to “crack the bubble” for the wealthy, and show those in “the bottom 30%” the ways that poverty goes beyond individual decisions to structural issues, said Myers-Lipton.

“Sensitizing people – especially leaders in the top 30% – is a good thing, but I think we then have to talk about what we are going to do about (poverty) directly,” said Myers-Lipton. He argues that longer term political action like raising the minimum wage or finding methods of distributing wealth more fairly are essential.  “‘What kind of structures can we create that would alleviate this?’ That’s the next question.”