radiofree.asia

Category: SUCCESS STORIES

  • Can $1,000 a month help more students land nursing careers? An L.A. pilot effort says yes

    By Rebecca Plevin

    See original post here.

    Community colleges play a critical role in addressing California’s persistent demand for healthcare workers, preparing students to become the state’s next generation of nurses, medical assistants and physical therapy aides.

    But in the Los Angeles Community College District, where more than half of all students report incomes near or below the poverty line, many people struggle to complete their degrees while also holding down jobs to pay rent, buy groceries and cover child-care costs.

    A pilot program at the L.A. district — the state’s largest, with nine colleges and 194,000 students — aims to address these seemingly intractable challenges with a targeted remedy: $1,000 a month in guaranteed income.

    Late last year, the district launched an initiative that provides cash payments for 12 months to 251 students with a demonstrated financial need who are pursuing health careers. The funding is unrestricted, so participants can use the money however they see fit.

    The goal of the effort, dubbed Building Outstanding Opportunities for Students to Thrive, or BOOST, is to eliminate financial insecurity so that students can focus on achieving their academic goals and the college system can deliver a diverse, multilingual healthcare workforce to serve L.A. in the process.

    The Times followed one student through the first months of the new initiative to learn how a guaranteed basic income might influence the lives and choices of L.A. community college students.

    Adriana Orea, 32, has known for years that she wanted to pursue a career in nursing. She had worked for a time as a licensed vocational nurse, and found the experience rewarding. But after giving birth to a son two years ago, she set her sights on a higher-paying position as a registered nurse, which generally requires a bachelor’s degree from an accredited nursing program.

    “I want to give him opportunities, and in order to do that, I have to get ahead,” said Orea, a single mother. “I don’t want him to feel like he’s missing out on something because I’m not able to provide it for him.”

    She had recently returned to school, enrolling at L.A. City College in the prerequisite courses she’ll need to get accepted into a nursing school, when she was selected for BOOST. She received her first cash payment on Thanksgiving.

    “I feel very blessed to have been picked,” she told The Times a few days later. “At the same time, I feel like I want to be very responsible with this, because it’s not something to be taken lightly.”

    Orea lives with her parents and her curly-haired 2-year-old, Kevin, in a rent-controlled building near MacArthur Park. In early December, she was taking three classes and working eight hours a week at the front desk of the college counseling department — a position she got through the state’s welfare-to-work program.

    She is quick to express gratitude for her parents, who are crucial partners in helping raise her son. Her parents, both Mexican immigrants who work night shifts as janitors, watch Kevin while Orea is on campus. She covers most of the family’s food expenses with her CalFresh benefits, spending between $500 and $600 a month on groceries, and also pitches in for rent.

    “It’s just been living on a budget, which is definitely doable, because I have so much support,” she said.

    Of the first $1,000 payment, she spent about $600 on outstanding bills for Kevin’s newborn check-ups that had resulted from a lapse in health insurance. She also used some of the money to buy Christmas gifts for her family and a holiday outfit for herself. She received the second payment in mid-December, and was determined to not dip into it.

    “I’m just treating it like I’m not receiving it,” she said.

    By January, she already felt more financially secure, having squirreled away $1,000 and knowing more would be coming.

    “I might actually have something in the back pocket,” she said. “It’s not just a paycheck-to-paycheck thing.”

    More than 150 guaranteed income pilot programs have launched nationwide in recent years, but BOOST is one of the first focused on community college students.

    Proponents tout unconditional cash as a way to provide greater stability to vulnerable community members. But as the concept has gained steam, it has also spurred backlash. Several Republican-led state legislatures are banning or trying to preempt cities and counties from launching direct cash initiatives, arguing publicly funded programs are a waste of taxpayer resources.

    The BOOST program is privately funded with more than $3.1 million from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and $867,500 from the California Community Foundation’s Young Adults Forward Fund. It represents a rare philanthropic investment in California community college students, who number 2.1 million statewide. Typically, more than half of California high school graduates start at a community college.

    There is a “massive mismatch of where private philanthropic dollars go and where students in California go to school, particularly if we think about low-income, first-generation and students of color,” said Kelly King, executive director of the Foundation for the Los Angeles Community Colleges. “This level of investment in community college students is very unusual, unfortunately, but it’s very much needed.”

    To be eligible for BOOST, students must have selected a health-related major and express interest in pursuing a health career, as well as have a demonstrated financial need and be considered low-income for L.A. County. Participants in the pilot were selected by lottery, with 251 receiving the monthly payments and an additional 370 enrolled in a control group.

    Of the total participants, 72% are female, 65% are Hispanic or Latino, and 29% report that the primary language in their household is Spanish, according to data provided by the community college district. The average annual household income is $31,853, and 47% report having children in the household.

    Like other pilots, BOOST is designed as a research study. In this case, the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania is analyzing how the unrestricted payments affect the well-being of students and what role it might play in keeping them on track in completing their healthcare degrees.

    “Lack of basic needs, food insecurity and unexpected financial shocks create barriers for students that often push them out of education,” said Amy Castro, the center’s co-founder and faculty director. “Dreaming about your future should be a feature of young adulthood that is open to all — not just the wealthy or those with the good fortune to have ironclad access to higher education.”

    By mid-February, the guaranteed payments had made a big difference in Orea’s life.

    Determined to take advantage of the financial support, she enrolled in four classes for the spring semester. She felt as if her momentum was snowballing, and realized that with better time management, she could also take on a few more hours at work and make a bit more money.

    Despite having more on her plate, Orea seemed less stressed. Knowing she didn’t need to hold down a full-time job, or a second part-time gig, to support her son was in itself a huge relief.

    “I can literally just concentrate on studying for my classes,” she said.

    She had started amassing an emergency fund in case she or Kevin gets sick and she’s unable to work.

    She was also feeling more comfortable spending the money. She bought her family a Valentine’s Day lunch at Sizzler, treating her mom to the buffet and her dad to his favorite steak and shrimp dish. She took Kevin to Big Bear to see snow. And if she ran out of time to pack a lunch from home, she didn’t stress about grabbing a sandwich at a doughnut shop near campus.

    “I see my bank account going up — I feel like I’m saving,” she said. So, she’s able to tell herself: “This is not a big splurge, I can treat myself.”

    By early April, Orea had received $5,000 through BOOST.

    She opened a high-yield savings account, with the goal of using her money to make money. She purchased Disneyland tickets to celebrate her mom’s 60th birthday. She had recently received two parking tickets, and while she said she was disappointed to lose money, it wasn’t the crisis hit to her budget that it would have been in the past.

    She said receiving the cash — and knowing it was temporary — has made her “laser-focused” on her goals: Finish her prerequisite courses this spring; work part-time as a licensed vocational nurse this summer while studying for her nursing school entrance exam; then apply to schools in the fall and start a nursing program next spring.

    “Having this opportunity made me take a hard look at myself and be like, ‘This is what you want. How are you going to get there? Take advantage that you have this,’” she said.

    At the same time, her horizons have expanded. Receiving the guaranteed income had freed her from the suffocating sensation of constantly worrying about money.

    “Once you feel like there’s one less thing stressing you out, you just feel this relief,” she said. “It clears your mind a little more and you just feel less stressed about everything else.”

    Orea said she expects the money she has saved through BOOST will smooth her transition to nursing school. She hopes to receive financial aid to attend a nursing program at L.A. City College or a Cal State university, but said she would take out loans if needed to attend a more expensive private school. She plans to live at home and pick up a couple of shifts each week as a licensed vocational nurse while in school, but said her savings from this year should help ensure she isn’t stretched thin during the two-year program.

    She will likely remain in L.A. County after nursing school, she said. She worked in geriatrics previously, but is interested in exploring work in a birthing or neonatal unit. No matter where she works, she will use her Spanish fluency to communicate with patients and their families.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • ‘It comforted me:’ Oakland’s guaranteed basic income program ends. Here’s who it helped

    By Sarah Ravani

    See original post here.

    Oakland’s pilot guaranteed income program — one of the largest in the country — allowed participants to stay housed and get employment, according to a study of the initiative released Tuesday.  

    Employment rose from 15% to 26% for those participating in the 18-month, $6.7 million program, according to UpTogether, a social services organization that oversaw Oakland’s guaranteed income plan. The program’s analysis also showed that 44% of the participants were less likely to experience homelessness. 

    But the program’s organizers acknowledged that guaranteed income isn’t a solution to addressing systemic issues. Despite successes with pilot guaranteed income programs across the country, the initiatives have trouble scaling up since most rely on philanthropy, and whether they can affect peoples’ lives long-term remains unclear. 

    Oakland and other cities that are struggling to balance their budgets are an unlikely source of funding for such programs. 

    “Even though guaranteed income works, it can’t solve everything on its own,” said Jesús Gerena, the CEO of UpTogether. Gerena added that guaranteed income isn’t enough “to counter decades of disinvestment and the rising cost of living.” 

    Oakland’s program, which was launched under former Mayor Libby Schaaf, gave 600 residents $500-a-month cash payments with no strings attached for 18 months.

    Participants had to be low-income with at least one child under 18 to be eligible for the program. It was open to anyone whose income qualified — a shift after the initial rollout spurred criticism that white residents wouldn’t be considered. For a family of three, annual income had to be below $61,650 and below $84,950 for a family of seven to qualify. 

    The study found that participants were more likely to save for the future, improve their health, support children in extracurricular activities and other benefits. 

    A similar study in Los Angeles, which paid 3,200 families $1,000 a month for a year, found that participants were more likely to secure full-time employment and find more stable housing.

    Guaranteed income projects have taken off in the Bay Area and nationwide. Some, including the one in Oakland, have modeled their programs after one in Stockton, which has seen success. That program, which gave residents $500 a month, showed that when people received additional funds, it helped them gain employment, address mental health needs and take care of their families. There are at least 150 guaranteed income pilots happening across the country in at least 27 states, Schaaf said Tuesday in a webinar about the program.

    But the long-term benefits of guaranteed income remain elusive. While participants in a program in Texas and Illinois gained flexibility to spend on basic needs, the cash didn’t change their net worth or mental or physical health, according to a 2024 study.

    Schaaf applauded the Oakland program and said guaranteed income and other forms of unrestricted cash transfers allow people to tap into their potential. She balked at criticism that giving people free money will encourage them to stop working. 

    “It’s the exact opposite,” Schaaf said. 

    Schaaf said after the pandemic decimated the city’s economy — an issue that Oakland continues to grapple with — she was searching for an opportunity to help families rebuild. She got a phone call from Blue Meridian Partners, a philanthropic organization focused on poverty, asking for a proposal on how to help build an equitable recovery post-pandemic. As a member of Mayors for Guaranteed Income, a network of mayors advocating for the initiative, Schaaf said she felt like the invitation was her gateway to launching a guaranteed income program in Oakland. Blue Meridian Partners raised more than $6.7 million for the pilot program and about 80% of those funds went directly to residents. 

    Gerena said his organization is boosting philanthropic efforts to launch different guaranteed income programs nationwide. 

    Marrio Fitzgerald, an Oakland resident who participated in the program, said Tuesday that the initiative helped him pay for sports and other extracurricular activities for his children. 

    “When I got the income, it was a hard time in life for me,” Fitzgerald said. “I was under a lot of anxiety and stress, it comforted me to know that I would be able to make it to the next month.” 

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Madison program gave away cash. People worked even more.

    By Danielle DuClos

    See original post here.

    When Vanessa Munsey applied for the state’s first guaranteed income program almost three years ago, she was living out of her car with her infant and three-year-old son.

    The program, known as the Madison Forward Fund, offered participants like Munsey $500 a month over a year that they could spend on anything.

    Around the same time Munsey was approved for the guaranteed income program, she had applied for a job as a legal assistant at a Madison law firm, she said. But she didn’t have a college degree.

    Using payments from the Madison Forward Fund, Munsey was able to afford paralegal classes while working at the law firm, though.

    “Being in school and being an active student is a really huge part of why I got this job,” she said.

    Almost two years after Munsey received her last $500 payment, she is in stable housing and about to graduate with a paralegal degree. Her kids also participate in extracurriculars like ballet and jiu-jitsu classes, she recently told a packed room at the Black Business Hub for an event about the guaranteed income program.

    “The (Madison Forward) Fund gave me a fighting chance to be successful and really changed the course of my life and the quality of life that my kids get to have now,” she said.

    The Madison Forward Fund marked Wisconsin’s first guaranteed income program with $930,000 in funding solely provided by private donors. Kick-started by Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, the program was a partnership between multiple groups including the city, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty.

    Now, the success of the Madison Forward Fund is leading the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness to run a second iteration of the program, according to Michelle Robinson, the organization’s chief programs and partnerships officer.

    “We also know that guaranteed income is not just about money,” Robinson said at the Black Business Hub event April 8. “It’s about creating the conditions for healthy people and healthy communities. … It’s about what becomes possible when we stop punishing people for being poor or economically insecure and start investing in them as whole human beings.”

    Known as the Madison Forward Fund 2.0, the program focuses on pregnant people and mothers with at least one child aged 3 or younger. It will serve 42 randomly selected families in Dane County who make 200% or less of the federal poverty line and have participated in one of the foundation’s Maternal Child Health Programs. 

    This continuation of the program started in March and will run through February next year, providing $500 a month along with wraparound financial coaching and maternal health services. The program’s funders include UW Health, Madison Gas and Electric, and the Evjue Foundation.

    Of the 42 participating families, their median household income is $18,400. Almost a quarter of participants have experienced domestic violence in the last year and 60% have experienced food insecurity, according to the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness.

    While results from the Madison Forward Fund pilot aren’t finalized, preliminary findings show a higher rate of families receiving payments were employed full-time halfway through the program, at the end of the year and six months later than families in the program’s control group. A report with more details is expected from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the end of this month.

    Initial findings suggest the $500 in guaranteed income each month provided financial support without reducing workforce participation, according to the Madison Forward Fund.

    Participants spent the bulk of their payments on retail goods and groceries at 29% and 27%, respectively. Transportation, housing and utilities were the next largest spending categories with less than 14% spent on entertainment, health care, financial transactions and education.

    To participate in the first round, families had to live in the city of Madison, have a child 17 years or younger in the household, and make no more than 200% of the federal poverty line. At the time, that income was $55,500 a year for a family of four in Wisconsin.

    The median household income of participants was $14,378 a year, according to a Center for Guaranteed Income website tracking the program.

    A living wage in Madison for a family of four with two working adults is $29 an hour, according to the Living Wage Calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A living wage is how much each full-time worker must earn on an hourly basis to help cover the cost of their family’s minimum basic needs.

    A living wage in Madison translates to nearly $60,000 a year that each adult would need to make. For a single parent of two children, a living wage in Madison is considered $53 an hour, or $109,000 a year.

    “Families are working really, really hard,” said Blake Roberts Crall, program manager of the Madison Forward Fund. “But it doesn’t matter how hard families are working. They still can’t get ahead. And there’s a lot of important social safety net programs or other sorts of resources out there. But even with that, it’s not enough to be able to really thrive in the city or in the community.”

    The Madison Forward Fund was structured as a randomized control trial to study the effects the payments had on families. Of the 3,000 eligible applicants, 155 households were randomly chosen to receive the $500 monthly payments. Another 200 households didn’t receive payments and acted as a control group.

    Participants were surveyed throughout the year of payments and then for another six months afterward. Over 80% of participants were female and almost three quarters were single. About half of participants were Black, around a quarter were white, and the remaining quarter were mixed-race, Asian or Latino.

    Similar programs have been piloted across the country. Researchers of a guaranteed income program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, found participants reported higher incomes and full-time employment after receiving payments. A program in Rhode Island showed payments helped people transition out of homelessness as well as significantly increased their likelihood of attending their child’s school meetings.

    While those programs were short-term pilots, Alaska has run a universal basic income program since the 1980s, known as the Permanent Fund Dividend. The payments vary year to year and are funded by investment earnings from the state’s mineral royalties. All residents can receive a payment, regardless of income or employment status.

    Studies of Alaska’s payments show the income doesn’t negatively impact employment and can reduce rural poverty rates for Alaska Natives.

    Lawmakers seek to block guaranteed income programs

    A bill making its way through the state Assembly this year aims to ban municipalities from using state funds to support guaranteed income programs.

    The bill was introduced by Reps. Jim Piwowarczyk, R-Hubertus, and Dave Maxey, R-New Berlin. At a public hearing on the legislation April 10, they highlighted concerns about taxpayer dollars going to these types of programs.

    “Local governments should not be allowed to divert taxpayer dollars from critical programs to fund initiatives that encourage dependency on the government rather than fostering self-reliance,” Piwowarczyk said.

    The Madison Forward Fund relied solely on private philanthropy rather than taxpayer dollars for funding payments to its participants.

    At the legislative hearing, Piwowarczyk raised concerns about a similar, ongoing guaranteed income program in Milwaukee aimed at helping low-income pregnant mothers. That program, called the Bridge Project, received $350,000 in federal COVID-19 relief dollars from the city of Milwaukee and is otherwise supported by private funds, according to the Zilber Family Foundation, which is partnering on the project.

    The bill was moved out of the Assembly Committee on Public Benefit Reform April 15 with the committee’s four Republican members voting in favor. The committee’s two Democratic members — Reps. Ryan Clancy, D-Milwaukee, and Christian Phelps, D-Eau Claire — voted against the legislation, questioning the need for the bill.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • The first German long-term study on unconditional basic income ended after three years. And it refutes a central argument from the critics.

    By Matthias Pöls

    See original post here.

    The first long-term study on the unconditional basic income in Germany shows that it improves people’s happiness and mental health. Despite the financial support, recipients do not reduce their working hours more than others.

    The unconditional basic income has a “significantly positive” effect on people. This is the conclusion of the first German long-term study, the results of which were presented on Wednesday by the association “My Basic Income.” According to the study, recipients do not work less than others, but are overall happier and mentally healthier.

    Nearly 1,700 people participated in the study on the “Basic Income Pilot Project.” 122 of them received an unconditional basic income (UBI) of €1,200 per month tax-free for three years, from June 2021 to May 2024. The focus of the now published study was on employed individuals between the ages of 21 and 40 with a monthly net income of €1,100 to €2,600—the younger middle class.

    Leipzig woman fulfilled her dream with basic income

    Since 2014, millions of people have applied to participate in the donation-funded project – and thus receive an unconditional basic income. Romy from Leipzig’s lottery number was also drawn. Since June 2024, the 34-year-old has been receiving a so-called “utopian basic income.” This means 1,000 euros every month for a year. “I’ve fulfilled a dream with this,” says the psychologist.

    This allowed her to establish a part-time freelance artist career, Romy explains. “I took a career break at the end of last year to do this.” She primarily paints with acrylic and oil paints on canvas, and her website will be online soon. Nevertheless, Romy has been able to build up a financial cushion.

    Participants did not reduce working hours more than others

    A frequently voiced criticism of an unconditional basic income for everyone is that it would cause people to reduce their working hours, which could lead to problems for the economy. However, the study participants did not reduce their working hours any more than other people. There was no difference in this regard between the basic income group and the comparison group, according to the association “My Basic Income.” However, the UBI recipients continued their education more often and were more satisfied with their employment situation.

    It would be desirable if in the future there would be more fact-based debate in science, politics and society.Jürgen Schupp, Head of Studies

    “The results contribute to an evidence-based, objective approach to the debate surrounding the basic income narrative,” explained Professor Jürgen Schupp, who led the study at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin). “It would be desirable for debates in academia, politics, and society to be increasingly based on facts in the future,” he continued.

    More peace in everyday life and greater self-confidence

    “It gives you a lot of peace in your everyday life and has also boosted your self-confidence,” says Romy. She and a friend won the basic income at the same time, and both of them have made many steps forward as a result. Her friend was able to start university at 40, something that would otherwise have been much more difficult to achieve.

    We didn’t have to keep a close eye on our money and whether it would be enough at the end of the month.Romy receives basic income

    But there were also smaller things that made life more pleasant overall. Romy and her friend enjoy going to concerts. “That way, we didn’t have to keep a close eye on our money and whether we’d have enough at the end of the month,” Romy said. On the other hand, it wasn’t a million euros, so “you’re very conscious about using the basic income.”

    First fulfill your wishes, then build up a financial cushion

    According to the study, the randomly selected participants initially fulfilled long-held dreams with their basic income. However, many later saved and invested, thus building sustainable financial security.

    During the study period, the proportion of those with assets of less than €10,000 reportedly fell to 13 percent, compared to 27 percent in the comparison group. In addition, those receiving a UBI shared more than twice as much money with their friends and family or through donations than the comparison group—about €125 per month.

    According to the association, the participants were able to significantly expand their scope of action and improve their overall well-being. This was also reflected in reduced stress, better sleep, and a more fulfilling social life.

    Regular online questionnaires formed the central component of the data collection. Participants in the study on the impact of the UBI included the DIW Berlin, the Vienna University of Economics and Business, the Institute for Employment Research, and the University of Oxford.

    What consequences the introduction of an unconditional basic income could have

    Klara Simon, chairwoman of “My Basic Income,” says: “A UBI can lead to massive savings in the health and social care systems. Because mentally stable people can work more productively and innovatively.” Furthermore, the UBI could increase equal opportunities in a modernized social system. “Thus, it can be an effective tool against the growing social inequality in this country, which is currently eroding our democracy from within.”

    From the association’s perspective, an unconditional basic income of €1,200 per month for all citizens is affordable. This was shown by a financing calculator developed jointly with the DIW in 2023. Over 80 percent of the population would ultimately have more money, while seven percent would see nothing change, and ten percent would have to pay more.

    According to “My Basic Income,” the whole thing could be financed primarily through higher income taxes, the abolition of tax privileges, and social benefits that are no longer necessary.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Cook County leaders are touting the success of their guaranteed income pilot program

    By Kristen Schorsch

    See original post here.

    With federal funding for guaranteed income spent, a committee will determine what’s next for the county program.

    Cook County’s pilot program to provide guaranteed income to more than 3,000 people did what it was intended to do, early findings suggest — it helped provide some economic stability.

    “We got to make the case that these are great investments in our residents and our citizens,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said.

    For two years as part of an initiative called Cook County Promise, recipients who had low to moderate income received $500 a month, which they could spend on whatever they wanted. They mostly used the funds on food, rent, utilities and transportation, according to preliminary survey results. People said the infusion of money helped reduce stress and helped them feel more financially secure.

    But after the last payments arrived in January, the county is forming an advisory committee to figure out what’s next for the program.

    Cook County Promise is one of Preckwinkle’s signature initiatives, and it received national attention. She has vowed to make it permanent.

    “I think it’s really important that we be part of the national conversation around guaranteed income,” Preckwinkle said in an interview. “We’re the richest country in the world … and we don’t take care of our own. And we got to do better.”

    She points out the expanded child tax credit in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic helped reduce poverty.

    Cook County Promise began in 2022 and was paid for with $42 million from the federal government to help recover from the pandemic. Governments across the U.S. used pandemic funding to pilot guaranteed income programs. Chicago had a program, too, but that has ended, much to the ire of advocates.

    Sabrina Eve Panariella, a single mother of two boys, got into the county’s program through a lottery after she lost her job. Her rent had just gone up by $250 a month and she was in school to become a certified yoga teacher. She remembers the moment she was standing in her kitchen when she got a text alerting her she won a spot in Cook County Promise.

    “I just kind of dropped down on my knees, and I was like, thank you God,” said Panariella, 45, who lives in west suburban River Grove. “I just really was so excited that the universe gave me this opportunity to get, you know, some help financially.”

    She found a job just before getting into Cook County Promise. But Panariella said she was making half as much as she did at her previous job. Her savings were depleted and she used state assistance to help buy food and get medical care.

    Panariella said she used her monthly payments from the county to pay for rent, bills and groceries, and feels more confident after going through the program. She said she works hard to fill the $500 monthly gap in her budget now that her payments have ended.

    “I have this positive mentality that it’s going to work out,” Panariella said. “I just work my butt off until I can earn what I need to earn to take care of myself and my two kids and my two cats.”

    That includes building her yoga business.

    The county released survey results from GiveDirectly, which administered Cook County Promise and checked in with recipients a few times during the program. At one point roughly 94% of participants said they used the money to manage a financial emergency or unexpected expense, while 73% said they believed the payments would impact them after the program ended.

    Separately, researchers at University of Chicago’s Inclusive Economy Lab are evaluating the program and plan to reveal their findings this year. Initial findings showed that when the program first started, participants most commonly prioritized paying bills, followed by paying off debt.

    Some of that came to fruition, according to GiveDirectly’s survey results. Around 45% of people said they were able to avoid debt, while another 31% say they reduced their debt.

    More than 300 participants in the program used financial counseling, and almost 60% who worked with the non-profit Working Credit for at least a year increased their credit score on average nearly 40 points, according to the county.

    The advisory committee is set to meet later this spring. They will look at everything from the scale of a future guaranteed income program to who would be eligible depending on where they live. For example, that might include more participants who live in Chicago now that the city’s program has ended. About 15% of people in Cook County Promise lived in Chicago and the rest lived in the suburbs, said Dominic Tocci, deputy bureau chief in the county’s Bureau of Economic Development.

    The committee also will determine how to pay for the program, which could be from a mix of general operating funds and philanthropy, Preckwinkle and Tocci said.

    It’s not clear yet when the next iteration of the county’s guaranteed income initiative would start. More than 230,000 people applied for the pilot program, which county leaders say underscores the need for financial assistance.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Cook County leaders are touting the success of their guaranteed income pilot program

    By Kristen Schorsch

    See original post here.

    With federal funding for guaranteed income spent, a committee will determine what’s next for the county program.

    Cook County’s pilot program to provide guaranteed income to more than 3,000 people did what it was intended to do, early findings suggest — it helped provide some economic stability.

    “We got to make the case that these are great investments in our residents and our citizens,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said.

    For two years as part of an initiative called Cook County Promise, recipients who had low to moderate income received $500 a month, which they could spend on whatever they wanted. They mostly used the funds on food, rent, utilities and transportation, according to preliminary survey results. People said the infusion of money helped reduce stress and helped them feel more financially secure.

    But after the last payments arrived in January, the county is forming an advisory committee to figure out what’s next for the program.

    Cook County Promise is one of Preckwinkle’s signature initiatives, and it received national attention. She has vowed to make it permanent.

    “I think it’s really important that we be part of the national conversation around guaranteed income,” Preckwinkle said in an interview. “We’re the richest country in the world … and we don’t take care of our own. And we got to do better.”

    She points out the expanded child tax credit in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic helped reduce poverty.

    Cook County Promise began in 2022 and was paid for with $42 million from the federal government to help recover from the pandemic. Governments across the U.S. used pandemic funding to pilot guaranteed income programs. Chicago had a program, too, but that has ended, much to the ire of advocates.

    Sabrina Eve Panariella, a single mother of two boys, got into the county’s program through a lottery after she lost her job. Her rent had just gone up by $250 a month and she was in school to become a certified yoga teacher. She remembers the moment she was standing in her kitchen when she got a text alerting her she won a spot in Cook County Promise.

    “I just kind of dropped down on my knees, and I was like, thank you God,” said Panariella, 45, who lives in west suburban River Grove. “I just really was so excited that the universe gave me this opportunity to get, you know, some help financially.”

    She found a job just before getting into Cook County Promise. But Panariella said she was making half as much as she did at her previous job. Her savings were depleted and she used state assistance to help buy food and get medical care.

    Panariella said she used her monthly payments from the county to pay for rent, bills and groceries, and feels more confident after going through the program. She said she works hard to fill the $500 monthly gap in her budget now that her payments have ended.

    “I have this positive mentality that it’s going to work out,” Panariella said. “I just work my butt off until I can earn what I need to earn to take care of myself and my two kids and my two cats.”

    That includes building her yoga business.

    The county released survey results from GiveDirectly, which administered Cook County Promise and checked in with recipients a few times during the program. At one point roughly 94% of participants said they used the money to manage a financial emergency or unexpected expense, while 73% said they believed the payments would impact them after the program ended.

    Separately, researchers at University of Chicago’s Inclusive Economy Lab are evaluating the program and plan to reveal their findings this year. Initial findings showed that when the program first started, participants most commonly prioritized paying bills, followed by paying off debt.

    Some of that came to fruition, according to GiveDirectly’s survey results. Around 45% of people said they were able to avoid debt, while another 31% say they reduced their debt.

    More than 300 participants in the program used financial counseling, and almost 60% who worked with the non-profit Working Credit for at least a year increased their credit score on average nearly 40 points, according to the county.

    The advisory committee is set to meet later this spring. They will look at everything from the scale of a future guaranteed income program to who would be eligible depending on where they live. For example, that might include more participants who live in Chicago now that the city’s program has ended. About 15% of people in Cook County Promise lived in Chicago and the rest lived in the suburbs, said Dominic Tocci, deputy bureau chief in the county’s Bureau of Economic Development.

    The committee also will determine how to pay for the program, which could be from a mix of general operating funds and philanthropy, Preckwinkle and Tocci said.

    It’s not clear yet when the next iteration of the county’s guaranteed income initiative would start. More than 230,000 people applied for the pilot program, which county leaders say underscores the need for financial assistance.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • SFCC student says guaranteed basic income pilot ‘helpful in every way’

    By Carina Julig

    See original post here.

    Leslye Melchor de Cardona had a lot going on in 2022.

    Pregnant with her third child, she was pursuing a credential in early childhood education at Santa Fe Community College to qualify to be an at-home child care provider, something she was hoping to do after her baby was born.

    In the midst of it all and just 29 years old, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

    She also was selected to be one of 100 participants in a pilot program funded by the city of Santa Fe in which students with children at the community college were given $400 a month for a year — between October 2021 and September 2022 — with no restrictions on how the funds could be spent.

    A new report by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania found the participants were more likely to be employed, more likely to be able to withstand a financial emergency and more able to financially help other people in their community after it ended.

    Melchor de Cardona described the guaranteed income program as a lifeline during a difficult time for her and her family.

    “Even though I was going through chemotherapy and radiation and all that, I was still going to school — I never stopped,” she said in a recent interview.

    She said the extra money “came at a time when I needed it the most.”

    It went toward bills, groceries and other expenses: “It was helpful in every way.”

    The pilot program was spearheaded in 2021 by the city, the Santa Fe Community Foundation and the community college as a project of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a national coalition that includes Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber.

    Webber and college officials said they were encouraged by the results and hope it will be a catalyst for more guaranteed income programs throughout New Mexico.

    “You think $400 is not a lot of money, but the amount of impact each of these dollars had on the student parents and their kids, it’s just pretty amazing,” said Yash Morimoto, a college vice president.

    The participants were overwhelmingly Hispanic women living below the poverty line, and each had an average of two children. More than 70% were receiving federal food assistance.

    The report by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research said the majority of participants used the extra income on household items and food, and by the end of the program most participants were more financially stable, had more money in savings and were able to spend more time with their children.

    The study did not compare the participants to a control group of nonparticipating students, but Morimoto and SFCC President Becky Rowley said they believe the money increased the participants’ chances of completing a degree program.

    Rowley noted external financial challenges are the biggest impediment to students staying in school, something that is especially difficult for students supporting a family. About 40% of SFCC students have children.

    “We’re trying to keep people from being in the position where they feel like they have to choose between their family and finishing what they’ve started with us,” she said. “And so if we can provide a little bit of extra income, then they may not have to make that choice.”

    Morimoto said students who leave college with a credential can earn $10,000 to $15,000 more in their careers.

    “That could really mean a difference between living in poverty to having a livable wage,” he said.

    But a perennial challenge for the community college is student retention, with its current fall-to-fall retention rate hovering slightly below 60%.

    Webber said that the pilot was specifically geared toward parents helped combat generational poverty, something he identified as one of New Mexico’s most significant challenges.

    He described the program’s results as “a really powerful confirmation that we do have tools at our disposal that will benefit families across Santa Fe” and potentially the state.

    Beyond helping students complete their education, Webber said the guaranteed income stipends gave people more control over their future.

    “Rather than having to simply accept whatever comes their way, they get to choose, and that’s a huge change in people’s lives,” he said.

    Rowley said she believes the study will make it easier for the college to fundraise for future initiatives.

    The city is also committed to keeping the program going, allocating an additional $1 million in February.

    Webber said there’s no reason the guaranteed income program couldn’t be replicated on a larger scale, something he believes would pay dividends.

    “People could actually be in the middle class, have a good-paying job with benefits and pass that on to their children, and you’d see a spiral of success that would change the trajectory for people all across our city and potentially all across the state,” he said.

    After completing her early childhood care credential, Melchor de Cardona completed about half of an associate degree before leaving school. With her cancer now in remission, her time is occupied by recovering from the grueling cancer treatments she went through and raising her four children, including a 1½-year-old boy she described as the family’s “miracle baby.”

    She said she hopes to go back to school to finish not just that degree but eventually a master’s degree, which would allow her to work with children in the school system.

    Melchor de Cardona said she isn’t the type of person who likes to leave things half-finished and said she is proud of how much she accomplished.

    “It was a happy time, but at the same time it was a sad situation,” she said. “But I’m glad I made it and I’m alive.”

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Lawmakers look to expand California’s guaranteed income program

    By Megan Myscofski

    See original post here.

    California started a $35 million guaranteed income program in 2023, giving people monthly checks for 12 to 18 months with no requirements on how to spend them. Now, some lawmakers are looking to find permanent funding for it. 

    The pilot program is for former foster youth and pregnant people with lower incomes, and has reached almost 2,000 participants with help from seven nonprofits. 

    Robin Baker manages the guaranteed income program for pregnant people at one of those organizations — the McKinleyville Family Resource Center in Humboldt County. 

    “It’s been interesting to see now a year out when people would have been returning to work that folks are able to have the space to find a job that’s a better fit for them or to spend more time with their babies or to go back to school,” she said. 

    Baker added there’s also less bureaucracy than other social service programs, which means less stress for participants and fewer costs for administrators. 

    Last year, the state allocated another $5 million to expand the pilot to adults over 60 — a population that experiences higher poverty rates than other age groups. The Department of Social Services said it expects to open applications for that program this spring. 

    “I’m tired of calling this a pilot. We know it works,” Riverside Democratic Assembly member Corey Jackson said at an informational hearing on Wednesday. He asked the Legislative Analyst’s Office and the Department of Finance to look into potential ways the state could permanently fund the program. 

    “I do believe that guaranteed income is a part of a 21st century social safety net to fill in the gaps that other, more stringent programs aren’t able to meet,” he said. 

    Guaranteed income pilots have sprung up around the country — including in some California cities and counties such as Sacramento County. Research on them shows generally positive outcomes. For example, the University of Pennsylvania looked into a program funded by Los Angeles and found participants had better access to food and experienced less domestic violence than a control group. 

    “People have higher rates of employment. They are more likely to be housed. They are more likely to be thriving because of direct cash,” said Rachel Resnick. She oversees the direct cash program at the National Council of Jewish Women Los Angeles, which also administers funds to pregnant people. 

    At the same time, conservative lawmakers and some taxpayer groups have opposed guaranteed income programs, calling it “redistribution.” That includes Susan Shelley, who represents the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

    “A guaranteed income program that’s funded by philanthropy from voluntary donations is fine,” she said. “But a guaranteed income program funded by taking money out of other people’s checks and redistributing it through the government is not fine.”

    Two Assembly Democrats — Alex Lee from Fremont and Nick Schultz of Burbank — authored Assembly Bill 661, which calls for the State Department of Social Services to study and make recommendations on how to expand the program.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Two cities tried basic income for formerly incarcerated people

    By Allie Kelly

    See original post here.

    Six hundred dollars a month was the boost some formerly incarcerated people needed to rent apartments, cover unexpected expenses, and land steady jobs.

    Gainesville, Florida, and Durham, North Carolina, recently tried using cash aid to help alleviate financial instability among formerly incarcerated residents, a demographic that is especially vulnerable to homelessness and food insecurity. Guaranteed basic income — which offers participants no-strings-attached payments — has been piloted across America as an approach to poverty reduction.

    The cities aren’t the only places that have tried similar cash aid programs: the Center for Employment Opportunities gave cash to over 10,000 formerly incarcerated people across the US in 2020.

    In Gainesville, 115 participants received an initial $1,000 payment followed by $600 a month for 11 months, ending in spring 2023. In Durham, 109 participants received $600 a month for one year, ending in spring 2023.

    Both participant cohorts were compared to control groups of formerly incarcerated people who did not receive GBI, and the pilot results were published by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania in February. The results are based on interviews with participants and surveys that were completed before, during, and six months after the program.

    While some Gainesville and Durham participants struggled to maintain financial gains after their cash payments ended, most said the money allowed them to afford essentials and alleviated some stress, which helped their mental health. Rent, groceries, and household bills were commonly reported uses of the GBI payments.

    “Guaranteed income really is just a tool to ensure, in the Gainesville and Durham cases especially, that no one is too poor to be free,” said Sukhi Samra, executive director of the advocacy group Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, which partnered on the pilots. “We’re not trapping people in a culture of poverty and in a culture of scarcity and lack.”

    Cash helped formerly incarcerated people afford essentials

    Formerly incarcerated people face higher rates of financial insecurity and unemployment compared to the rest of the population. This can make it difficult to afford basic needs. Per data published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2022, the most recent year available, about a third of formerly incarcerated individuals aren’t hired in the four years after their release. Black people were also admitted to jail at more than four times the rate of white people as of 2022.

    Most states give incarcerated people a small amount of money — between $10 and $200 — when they leave a prison or jail. However, some states restrict access to safety nets for formally incarcerated people. For example, Florida prohibits people who have been convicted of drug trafficking from accessing safety nets like SNAP and TANF.

    Brianna Seid, a lawyer for the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Business Insider that $10 or $200 might help buy a train or bus ticket home, but it isn’t near enough to pay court fees, lease an apartment, afford childcare, or establish reliable transportation — especially if people face limited access to safety nets.

    “There’s this idea that people get arrested or convicted, go to prison, and leave, and that’s just the end of the punishment,” Seid said. “I think for a lot of people, they don’t understand the ways that we excessively and perpetually punish people for having a criminal conviction, and it really touches every area of your life.”

    Cash is a potential way to ease work and income barriers, she said.

    In the Gainesville pilot, participants reported that guaranteed basic income helped them secure housing, have more hope, increase financial resiliency, and put food on the table. The share of participants who said they were “worried about having enough food” decreased from 59% at the start of the program to 49% six months after payments ended. The number of participants employed full-time also increased from 12% to 17% during that time.

    Durham participants reported using GBI money to buy hygiene products, afford food, and build savings. The percentage of participants “worried about having enough food” also decreased from 59% at the start of the program to 44% six months after payments ended. Over that same period, the share of participants who felt they had enough money to support themselves rose from 3.7% to 18.35%.

    Samra added that many participants in both Gainesville and Durham said that having extra cash helped them better adhere to probation requirements and prevent further arrests.

    Many participants struggled with housing costs after the programs ended

    Six months into receiving cash, 3% of Gainesville participants said they were experiencing homelessness. But six months after GBI ended, that figure had risen to 12%. In Durham, results showed that 29% of participants were severely housing-cost-burdened six months into the program, a number that rose to 41% six months after payments ended.

    At the same time, Samra said that guaranteed basic income isn’t meant to be a cure-all poverty solution. GBI pilots are temporary, and she said the financial challenges some participants faced after the program show that more support is needed.

    For Samra, there’s one major takeaway from the results: financial support is a step toward keeping people out of the prison system.

    “These results show that if you provide a little bit of cash support, you’re allowing folks the space and the ability to not only re-enter and breathe,” she said. “And prevent the sort of harm and activities that they wouldn’t be doing if it weren’t for a simple lack of cash.”

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • UBI Taiwan’s single-parent basic income reaches a new ‘milestone’

    By Tyler Prochazka

    See original post here.

    UBI Taiwan hosted a press conference to spotlight the progress of its basic income pilot program for single-parent households. The event brought together policymakers, academics, and beneficiaries to celebrate this milestone and advocate for a more equitable future.

    Two Taiwanese national legislators were present at the event, offering their support and emphasizing the broader implications of basic income for Taiwan. They stated they hoped this experiment could become a stepping stone for Taiwan to become a more fair and just society.

    Yu-Ling Chang, Assistant Professor of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley, hailed the initiative as a pivotal development in Taiwan’s social welfare history. “Implementing the basic income experiment is a new milestone for social welfare in Taiwan,” she remarked.

    Adding a personal dimension to the event, Ms. Yu, the first participant in UBI Taiwan’s basic income experiment, shared her experience. She expressed gratitude for the program, which provided much-needed stability and relief during a challenging period in her life. “The basic income gave me a moment to breathe,” she said, reflecting on how it allowed her to focus on her child and navigate life’s uncertainties, such as her recent battle with cancer.

    A documentary about Yu’s journey with basic income will be released later this year.

    To further raise awareness and funds for the single-parent basic income program, UBI Taiwan held a national charity debate competition in December. Students from Taiwan and Japan participated to deliberate on whether Southeast Asia should implement basic income, presenting diverse perspectives on issues such as entrepreneurialism, foreign direct investment, fiscal capacity, and governance challenges in developing nations.

    The championship round showcased arguments from both sides, with opponents emphasizing feasibility concerns while proponents argued that the social costs of inaction outweigh the investment required to implement basic income.

    The tournament raised over $1,000 USD, with the proceeds going toward developing the single-parent program. The fundraiser was organized by UBI Taiwan and Ascent Academy’s Youth Leadership Program, which is designed to connect young people with social impact initiatives in the spirit of basic income.

    Beyond the debate competition, students in the Youth Leadership Program are developing additional programs to address pressing social issues. Current projects include initiatives to support the homeless using cash cards and provide educational resources for low-income students. 

    UBI Taiwan plans to expand the single-parent basic income program this fall. To support this initiative, the organization also hosted a fundraiser talent show in January, inviting supporters to perform in support of the program.

    Jiakuan Su, chairman of UBI Taiwan, said he saw positive changes during the pilot program from finding a better job to improved educational development for the child. 

    “The value brought by basic income is not just the money, but more importantly the changes it brings to your life,” Su said. 

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Over the past half-decade, guaranteed basic income programs have improved lives around the country. Now they’re under political attack.

    By Robert Davis

    See original post here.

    It’s easy to see the scars living unhoused has left on Hilliard McAlpin. Walking with me through the streets of Denver, Colorado, he’s quiet and moves like he’s trying to ward off a future attack. He will laugh at jokes, but quickly masks his smile. When we first meet, the forty-nine-year-old seems like he’s in a battle against the world.

    Then we arrive at the spot where McAlpin used to live. Civic Center Park in downtown Denver sits between Denver’s City and County Building and the Colorado State Capitol. The pair of neoclassical structures loom over the park, projecting the ideals of order, reason, and democracy. But in 2021, Denver officials cleared about 100 unhoused people from the park ahead of annual holiday events. In effect, the city signaled that people like McAlpin were no longer welcome downtown.

    McAlpin points out a section of the northeast side of the lawn where he used to camp. The grass was dead, trampled under the feet of tourists. Glittering streamers and holiday debris hang in the bur oak trees, food wrappers littering the sidewalk. After spending eight years in prison, McAlpin spent another eight years camping in the park and staying in some of the city shelters, which he described as dangerous places. The longer we walk, the more memories seem to come flooding back.

    “Homelessness never really leaves you,” McAlpin says.

    Across the street, a group of houseless people sit along the stone retaining wall separating the state capitol lawn from the sidewalk. A man yells sporadically and indiscriminately. McAlpin turns to me and says we need to go over there.

    As soon as we arrive, McAlpin’s demeanor softens. He makes eye contact and shakes hands with as many people as possible. He greets some with a warm “You good?” He slips a $20 bill to one individual and tells him to share the wealth with his friends. He says he has done the same thing for his mother and his friends when they have had financial issues. McAlpin tells me he’s always been compassionate, but that a program called the Denver Basic Income Project (DBIP) has recently enabled him to give back.

    The Denver Basic Income Project is one of the largest guaranteed income pilots in the country. The publicly funded private program was launched in the fall of 2022 and has since distributed more than $10.8 million of no-strings-attached cash benefits to more than 800 unhoused people in Denver. Benefits ranged from receiving $50 per month up to $1,000 per month. At its peak, the program deployed roughly $475,000 monthly in cash and benefits like free cell phones for participants, according to DBIP Founder and Executive Director Mark Donovan. About 45 percent of participants had secured housing within ten months of joining the program, according to quantitative research on the program conducted by the University of Denver’s Center for Housing and Homelessness Research. DBIP also contributed to approximately $590,000 in cost savings for the city in emergency services, hospital visits, and jail time over its first year.

    For McAlpin, DBIP was a lifesaver. He struggled to find work or to receive other social benefits because of his criminal history. But that all changed soon after he entered the program. Being unhoused is among the most significant impediments to finding work. Travel to job interviews with no money for public transportation is impossible; it is also exceedingly difficult to consistently be punctual and dress professionally. Remote work can be challenging because of a lack of consistent Internet access, even when someone sleeps at a shelter or at supportive housing arrangements.

    McAlpin now works at a local company called GRID Alternatives installing solar panels. He also used the money to pay bills and provide food, rent payments, and other necessities for family members when they needed help. McAlpin now dreams of buying land and building a small community of self-sustaining homes inspired by the Pueblo Indigenous peoples.

    “It was really bittersweet,” McAlpin says about joining DBIP. “It was amazing to be able to help [my family], but it also accentuated the fact that our economic system and all these other things are in place to make things hard for the poor.”

    However, like other guaranteed income pilots operating across the United States, DBIP has faced significant political opposition. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston endorsed DBIP during his campaign in 2022, and his endorsement is still quoted on the program’s website. But in 2024, as funding from the city waned, Johnston rejected the city council’s budget amendment to continue funding the program in the 2025 budget—despite the efforts of DBIP, which held multiple public rallies in support of continued funding, as well as participants who spoke before Denver City Council to advocate for the program.

    DBIP made its last payments in September 2024 after the budget amendment failed. Donovan tells me the program still has $800,000 in the bank and is using the money to continue paying for phone services for its participants while he looks for additional funding. Beyond that, DBIP’s future remains uncertain. McAlpin tells me he’s no longer concerned about his own future due to the help he received from DBIP. But the potential end of the program still comes as a blow.

    “It all goes back to America’s divisions, our lack of wanting to understand, and America’s moral compass,” McAlpin said. “It’s all off whack.”

    Guaranteed income programs like DBIP emerged in the late 2010s as a way for governments to address the root causes of poverty. The programs are intended to create a so-called “income floor” that the most vulnerable populations can’t fall through by providing regular cash payments with no work requirements or other preconditions.

    Though the terms “guaranteed income” and “basic income” are often used interchangeably, guaranteed income programs specifically target people from socioeconomic backgrounds more likely to experience poverty and homelessness, according to the Economic Security Project. This includes people of color and Indigenous populations. There are also guaranteed income programs for single mothers, community college students, and domestic violence survivors, to name a few. Despite the “basic income” term in its name, the DBIP is a guaranteed income program.

    The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) program in Stockton, California, is one of the first guaranteed income pilots in the United States. It launched in February 2019 and gave 125 residents $500 of unrestricted cash per month for two years. Over those two years, the program reduced public expenditures on emergency services and helped more than 40 percent of participants land a full-time job. Many participants also reported feeling less stressed and anxious about their financial health. These results led former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs to form the group Mayors for a Guaranteed Income in June 2020, which, according to its website, now includes 166 mayors and county officials across the country.

    More than 150 guaranteed income initiatives have been launched since 2017. Yet, despite their numerous successes, these programs have faced significant and well-funded opposition. Opponents often rely on straw man arguments—such as claims that guaranteed income increases low-income households’ reliance on welfare and disincentivizes people from finding full-time work.

    But according to the Stanford Basic Income Lab, guaranteed income programs have the exact opposite effect on welfare reliance and workforce participation. Census data indicates that there are more than 1.4 million married couples with children under the age of eighteen who live below the poverty line, a total that has increased by 3 percent since 2019. Federal data from 2023 also shows there are 168,699 people in families with children who are houseless, a population that has grown by 16 percent since 2022. The country’s affordable housing shortage has primarily driven this trend, which speaks to the need for additional support systems like guaranteed income.

    Rightwing advocacy organizations such as the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) and politicians such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have been the main propagators of lies about guaranteed income. For instance, FGA argued in a report from February 2024 that guaranteed income pilots fundamentally stifle the economy and degrade American cultural values like self-determination.

    Paxton took this opposition a step further when he sued Harris County, Texas, in April 2024 to prevent it from launching a guaranteed income program called Uplift Harris. The program sought to use $20.5 million of federal COVID-19 relief funds to provide $500 monthly payments to approximately 1,900 low-income-earning residents. Two lower courts in Houston rejected Paxton’s attempts to block the program before the ultraconservative Texas Supreme Court ruled in June that the pilot likely violated the Texas state constitution’s prohibition on “gratuitous payments to individuals.”

    In August, Harris County officials tried to revamp the program to require that participants spend the money only on necessities like food, utilities, and shelter. These requirements are largely redundant, as research from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research found that most recipients spend their money on life-sustaining expenses like housing.

    Paxton responded to the changes by suing Harris County again in September 2024. He argued that using public funds to support low-income-earning households in this way “directly violates the law” and accused Harris County officials of “[undermining] the legal process out of apparent desperation to push this money into certain hands as quickly as possible.” A Harris County judge struck down Paxton’s second attempt to block the program in October, although the MAGA firebrand continued to fight it and appealed the decision. As of December 2024, the final appeal is pending, so no payments can be made.

    The backlash is having a sustained impact on guaranteed income pilots nationwide, with many programs being shut down when pilot periods end. Even progressive cities like San Francisco have had to shut down guaranteed income programs because of Republican backlash. Funding for Chicago’s guaranteed income program, which was established in 2022 to help those who experienced economic hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic, was cut from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $17.3 billion 2025 budget.

    Some Republican-controlled state legislatures have stepped into the fight as well. South Dakota, Iowa, and Idaho have all passed laws prohibiting basic and guaranteed income programs. Arizona, Mississippi, and Wisconsin lawmakers have all introduced similar legislation, although it failed to pass in those states.

    For DBIP participants like Rosemarie Palafox, the impact of guaranteed income is too good to pass up. Palafox tells me she had experienced homelessness on and off for most of her life. Her most recent spell came after she lost her job doing asbestos abatement. To make matters worse, Palafox was in a car wreck around the same time, preventing her from finding another job. She ended up moving into a Safe Outdoor Space—a city-sanctioned campsite for homeless people—operated by the Colorado Village Collaborative, where she was then put into a lottery to join DBIP.

    Palafox was accepted into the program and received an initial payment of $6,000 plus $500 per month for a year. That money was life-changing, she says. Palafox was able to enroll in classes at Metropolitan State University of Denver, where she studied construction management. She spent about half of her stipend on rent and utilities for a two-bedroom apartment and used the remaining funds to buy necessities like a laptop for school, as well as clothes and bedding for her nine-year-old niece, who lives with her.

    Before connecting with DBIP, Palafox says she relied on Section 8 housing vouchers and welfare benefits to make ends meet. That patchwork required a lot of paperwork, which made it hard to find another job, and to make it to doctor’s appointments for the knee injury she had sustained in her car accident.

    Now, Palafox says she doesn’t stress about money or losing her benefits. She is graduating from MSU a semester early so she can have knee surgery and start looking for a job in the construction industry. None of that would have been possible without the guaranteed income from DBIP, she says.

    “I’m not just, like, sitting around doing nothing,” Palafox says. “I’m trying to get stable and start a career, so I don’t have to depend on nobody.”

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Revolutionize social assistance by learning to trust

    By Neil Howard

    See original post here.

    Welfare almost always comes with strings attached. Imagine what would happen if it didn’t.

    When the authorities provide social assistance to those in need, it almost always comes with conditions attached. These include behavioural requirements or criteria determining who is and isn’t eligible for support.

    Common examples include proving that you’re looking for a job, are too ill to do so, or that you fall into a particular category that policymakers have decided is worthy of aid – for example, working children or single parents.

    This approach is problematic for at least three reasons. First, it can be ineffective, because targeted support like this often excludes many who desperately need it. Second, it can be inefficient, because behavioural controls are often ill-designed and inappropriate, while policing them requires expensive, unwieldy bureaucracy.

    Third, it is often contrary to human dignity. Evidence from many countries shows that the administrative practices associated with conditions have a tendency towards discrimination and dehumanisation.

    So, what is the alternative? Simply put, to provide social assistance unconditionally, without behavioural requirements or targeting. In other words, to provide assistance to all and with no strings attached.

    Colleagues and I from joint research teams in the UK, India and Bangladesh have recently completed two large-scale policy experiments that attempted to do this in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, and the Indian city of Hyderabad.

    In both cases, we provided unconditional assistance to all residents of five urban communities. The assistance combined unconditional cash and open-ended participatory forms of community organising delivered by social workers embedded in the communities.

    Cash was pegged at basic income levels in both countries and the organising was focused on building relationships, developing capacity, and above all on generating locally rooted solutions to locally identified problems.

    Our findings offer great cause for hope. Alongside predictable reductions in poverty, the basic income generated improvements in health, wellbeing, access to education, and quality of housing. We also found what we are calling a “dignity dividend” attached to it. The cash signifies to recipients that they matter, and that the material difficulties they face and their humanity are both recognised and worth responding to.

    The lack of conditions here is essential. Recipients repeatedly contrasted this with painful experiences of stigmatisation at the hands of mainstream welfare provision. As one woman put it: “we can’t believe you would just trust us”.

    Making space for good things to happen

    Our research suggests that the community organising that was wrapped around the cash also operates as an effective form of social protection unto itself. This is because it enables connection to services or bottom-up responses to individual and group challenges that would not have been possible had we come with pre-set notions of what was the “right” thing to do.

    For example, in Dhaka, affordable healthcare was unavailable to most people and represented a priority. In response, the community organisers set up monthly health camps in partnership with local providers to offer basic, low-cost healthcare to hundreds.

    But the real magic appears to lie at the intersection between the cash and the community organising. The cash seems to motivate participation in the community work, while the community work catalyses the impact of the cash.

    Punitive and exclusive forms of conditional welfare provision may well be counterproductive.

    We saw this especially in the formation of a labour union among the garbage collectors participating in our experiment in India. The union has gone on to make groundbreaking demands of local authorities in relation to working conditions and pay.

    Evidence from parallel experiments around the world is showing similar trends. One inspiring example with formerly incarcerated people in the southern US has shown a massive drop in recidivism.

    Another, with disadvantaged people of colour in the American mid-west, has shown benefits across indicators including health, wellbeing and work. These findings have been echoed in Peru in an experiment with indigenous Amazonian communities.

    Importantly, this approach to providing social assistance is beginning to take hold more widely. The international charity, Give Directly, offers cash to the poor with no strings attached, arguing that dollar-for-dollar this is by far the most efficient and effective approach.

    And in South Africa and Brazil, advocates are pushing for the replacement of patchy, targeted social safety nets with a universal basic income that provides all citizens with a degree of guaranteed security.

    The conclusion from this new wave of research is hard to escape: we don’t need punitive and exclusive forms of conditional welfare provision. In fact, this approach may well be counterproductive.

    So, while our leaders continue to impose austerity on us, following former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s infamous dictum that “there is no alternative”, the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. There is an alternative, and it is unconditional.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Tuberculosis rates plunge when families living in poverty get a monthly cash payout

    By Gabrielle Emanuel

    See original post here.

    What if the best medicine isn’t a pill or vaccine — but it’s cold cash?

    There’s a growing body of research that suggests economic programs that give money to very poor people can have major health benefits. Now, a new study — out on Friday in Nature Medicine — proves this approach can work when it comes to the world’s deadliest infectious disease: tuberculosis, which killed more than 1.25 million people in 2023.

    The study is impressive in its scale. Researchers combined two Brazilian datasets — one from the Ministry of Health and one that tracks social programs for the poorest half of the population — enabling them to zero in on 54 million people in Brazil living in poverty. In this group, 44% of them received cash each month from a government program while 56% did not. The families that received the cash were significantly less likely to contract TB. Among the extremely poor in this category, TB cases and deaths dropped by more than 50% and in the Indigenous population the drop was even more dramatic: more than 60%.

    “There are very large benefits — large and underappreciated — of these [types of] programs,” says Dr. Aaron Richterman, an assistant professor of infectious diseases and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the study.

    The findings could have far-reaching implications for global efforts to end the TB epidemic. “If we think about what can take us to the next level, it’s not the next drug,” he says. “It’s probably not the vaccine that we’re all waiting for. It may be something like this, which I think we have good reason to believe would help potentially end something like a TB epidemic.”

    Here’s a look at how the conditional cash transfer program works, why it’s having unintentional – but welcome – health impacts and what the implications are.

    Free money with some strings attached

    Twenty years ago, Brazil started what was then a revolutionary program. The government would give poor people a regular cash handout with a few strings attached. Today, the program, which is called Bolsa Familia (Portuguese for Family Allowance), helps 21 million families in Brazil or about a quarter of the population.

    To be eligible, a family must live below the poverty line. The government gives these households a monthly cash benefit that’s the equivalent of at least $120; the amount can increased, based on their neediness and the number of children. For some families, that sum doubles their income.

    Recipients can spend the money as they please. But they must meet certain requirements: sending their kids to school and regular check-ups for pregnant women and kids, including prenatal visits and childhood vaccinations.

    The program is focused on “the long game,” says Seema Jayachandran, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, who was also not involved in the study.

    “The philosophy of conditional cash transfers was to break the cycle of poverty by investing in the younger generation,” she says. “And it’s through two prongs: One is making sure they get educated, they grow up healthy with access to health care. And then the second is giving the family money so that they can have better food or school uniforms.”

    There’s lots of data to show that programs like Bolsa Familia reduce economic and social inequalities. But lately, she says, studies have been showing an added bonus: “There are some extra benefits that are actually quicker wins.”

    How money is helping people avoid and fight TB

    Tuberculosis is famously a disease of poverty.

    People are exposed to the bacteria that causes TB in overcrowded, under ventilated spaces.

    This type of scene is, unfortunately, familiar to many in Brazil, says Priscila Scaff, an author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the Federal University of Bahia’s Institute of Collective Health. In low-income families, she’s seen 10 people living in one room. In poor urban areas, she adds, there are sometimes houses “where they don’t have access to the sunlight” or fresh air. These are perfect conditions for TB to flourish — the tuberculosis bacteria spreads through the air, traveling on a cough, sneeze, spittle, or even a laugh. The monthly payouts might enable a family to move to larger, better ventilated quarters.

    The cash transfer can also lead to a healthier diet — and that can help avoid TB even if someone’s exposed to the bacteria. “People who have poor nutrition – it increases the risk very, very substantially for progression to tuberculosis,” says Richterman. Again, Scaff says, poor people in Brazil often don’t have access to enough food — or nutritious food.

    But things get better when a household enrolls in Bolsa Familia. It’s one of the program’s primary goals: On its website, the government claims to have reduced hunger for millions of families. A series of studies have found that families spend more on food than those who didn’t get the payments and that they buy healthier foods.

    And, finally, the treatment for TB is intensive — and can lead to a loss of income. “You have to treat it for at least six months. There’s a lot of side effects and toxicities related to the medicines,” says Richterman. “Even if you have free medicines, you have to take medicines every day, you have to get to the clinic, you have to get transported there. You’re sick and you can’t work,” he says.

    He explains that many day laborers — or others living hand-to-mouth — can’t afford to take time off work. Unless, of course, they have that extra cushion provided by Bolsa Familia.

    “So you can see how cash support — or poverty alleviation, more generally — can work at every single step of the way, from exposure to TB outcomes,” Richterman says.

    And there may be something else going on too, says Davide Rasella, a study author and head of the health impact assessment and evaluation group at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health or ISGlobal. It’s possible, he says, that because the program insists on regular checkups for kids, parents become more connected to the health system.

    “Sometimes the [health] outpost is not even so distant, but somehow it is not accessed,” he says. “[But with the requirements of the Bolsa Program] the families are in more contact with the health post. They trust more health professionals and they get diagnosed earlier.”

    But wait! It’s not just TB

    The magnitude of the drop in TB cases and deaths surprised even the study authors. “We were expecting an effect but not so big,” says Rasella.

    “What we are discovering – the more we study – is the effects are really strong. It’s not just tuberculosis. We have seen it in HIV/AIDS, child mortality, etc.,” he says. “We have a study showing an enormous effect on reduction of hospitalization, or millions of hospitalizations that have been avoided in the last two decades because of the [Bolsa Familia] program.”

    The study results are echoed in other parts of the world. In a study published last year, Richterman and colleagues looked at cash transfers in 37 low- and middle-income countries and found huge benefits for reducing mortality, including a 20% reduction in risk of adult women dying.

    He says they found that a program spends about $11,000 for each life that is saved. He calls that “an extraordinarily cost effective intervention just for that” — an stunning result from a program that was never intended to save lives. And protection from fatal illness is not the only payoff from payouts: “These programs do a lot of things. They improve education. They improve women’s empowerment. They reduce poverty. They improve food security. They improve child nutrition,” he says.

    There are now conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs all over the world — including in the U.S. “It’s an example of something that has spread from lower-middle income countries to rich countries,” says Jayachandran. And these efforts got a big boost during the pandemic when many countries were looking for ways to help households who’d lost income because of lockdowns and the like, especially without requiring in-person meetings.

    But these programs are not cheap. Bolsa Familia costs about 14 billion Brazilian reais — or about $2 billion — a month; the money comes from the state as well as groups like the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

    As policymakers debate whether they can afford to start or expand such programs, Rasella says, the message from Brazil is clear: It’s not just an economic program. It’s also an “impressive” health program.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • ‘We can’t believe you would just trust us’: why social assistance shouldn’t come with strings attached

    By Neil Howard

    See original post here.

    When the authorities provide social assistance to those in need, it almost always comes with conditions attached. These include behavioural requirements or criteria determining who is and isn’t eligible for support.

    Common examples include proving that you’re looking for a job, are too ill to do so, or that you fall into a particular category that policymakers have decided is worthy of aid – for example, working children or single parents.

    This approach is problematic for at least three reasons. First, it can be ineffective, because targeted support like this often excludes many who desperately need it. Second, it can be inefficient, because behavioural controls are often ill-designed and inappropriate, while policing them requires expensive, unwieldy bureaucracy.

    Third, it is often contrary to human dignity. Evidence from many countries shows that the administrative practices associated with conditions have a tendency towards discrimination and dehumanisation.

    So, what is the alternative? Simply put, to provide social assistance unconditionally, without behavioural requirements or targeting. In other words, to provide assistance to all and with no strings attached.

    Colleagues and I from joint research teams in the UK, India and Bangladesh have recently completed two large-scale policy experiments that attempted to do this in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, and the Indian city of Hyderabad.

    In both cases, we provided unconditional assistance to all residents of five urban communities. The assistance combined unconditional cash and open-ended participatory forms of community organising delivered by social workers embedded in the communities.

    Cash was pegged at basic income levels in both countries and the organising was focused on building relationships, developing capacity, and above all on generating locally rooted solutions to locally identified problems.

    Our findings offer great cause for hope. Alongside predictable reductions in poverty, the basic income generated improvements in health, wellbeing, access to education, and quality of housing. We also found what we are calling a “dignity dividend” attached to it. The cash signifies to recipients that they matter, and that the material difficulties they face and their humanity are both recognised and worth responding to.

    The lack of conditions here is essential. Recipients repeatedly contrasted this with painful experiences of stigmatisation at the hands of mainstream welfare provision. As one woman put it: “we can’t believe you would just trust us”.

    Making space for good things to happen

    Our research suggests that the community organising that was wrapped around the cash also operates as an effective form of social protection unto itself. This is because it enables connection to services or bottom-up responses to individual and group challenges that would not have been possible had we come with pre-set notions of what was the “right” thing to do.

    For example, in Dhaka, affordable healthcare was unavailable to most people and represented a priority. In response, the community organisers set up monthly health camps in partnership with local providers to offer basic, low-cost healthcare to hundreds.

    But the real magic appears to lie at the intersection between the cash and the community organising. The cash seems to motivate participation in the community work, while the community work catalyses the impact of the cash.

    We saw this especially in the formation of a labour union among the garbage collectors participating in our experiment in India. The union has gone on to make groundbreaking demands of local authorities in relation to working conditions and pay.

    Evidence from parallel experiments around the world is showing similar trends. One inspiring example with formerly incarcerated people in the southern US has shown a massive drop in recidivism.

    Another, with disadvantaged people of colour in the American mid-west, has shown benefits across indicators including health, wellbeing and work. These findings have been echoed in Peru in an experiment with indigenous Amazonian communities.

    Importantly, this approach to providing social assistance is beginning to take hold more widely. The international charity, Give Directly, offers cash to the poor with no strings attached, arguing that dollar-for-dollar this is by far the most efficient and effective approach.

    And in South Africa and Brazil, advocates are pushing for the replacement of patchy, targeted social safety nets with a universal basic income that provides all citizens with a degree of guaranteed security.

    The conclusion from this new wave of research is hard to escape: we don’t need punitive and exclusive forms of conditional welfare provision. In fact, this approach may well be counterproductive.

    So, while our leaders continue to impose austerity on us, following former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s infamous dictum that “there is no alternative”, the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. There is an alternative, and it is unconditional.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Housing those in need through a basic income

    By Mark Pancer

    See original post here.

    According to recent government of Ontario estimates, nearly a quarter of a million people in the province are unhoused.

    Many of those dealing with homelessness are families with children. A report presented to Waterloo regional council last year stated the numbers of those chronically experiencing homelessness have increased by an average of 28 per cent a year since 2020 — and are on track to have tripled by 2028.

    Homelessness has devastating impacts on those who experience it. Research tells us that people without homes have mortality rates three and a half times the population rate, and live an average of 26 fewer years. They tend to suffer from a host of chronic health conditions and are five times more likely to experience major depressive disorders than those who have stable housing.

    The most tragic effects are those experienced by children, who are significantly more likely than other children to show developmental delays, disruptions in their schooling, family separation and emotional difficulties. Homelessness affects the whole community. The growing number of encampments, or “tent cities,” entail significant costs to local sanitation, health and fire departments.

    It doesn’t have to be this way. There are effective ways of dealing with the problem. One way is to build more affordable housing, but this takes years. Another is through programs like Housing First, which provides rent subsidies.

    There is another solution, though, that has been shown to be effective and immediate in reducing homelessness, through the provision of a basic annual income. Basic income programs provide individuals with an unconditional annual cash transfer from the government to allow them to meet their basic needs, whatever those needs might be.

    One such program is the New Leaf Project in Vancouver. The program distributed $7,500 to each of 50 individuals who had been homeless for up to two years and then tracked them over the next year to see the impact these payments had on their housing situation. The results? Program participants spent 99 fewer days unhoused than they had before receiving the payment and spent significantly less time in shelters.

    In fact, it was estimated that there was a savings of $8,277 in shelter costs for each individual receiving the $7,500 payment. In other words, the program resulted in a cost savings of more than $750 for each person enrolled in the program. It is often thought that people who receive free money will just spend it on things like drugs and alcohol. This did not happen with the New Leaf participants. Rather, they spent their money on necessities like rent, food and transportation.

    Other programs have found similar effects. The Denver Basic Income Project provided cash payments to 800 people in Denver. Some recipients received monthly payments of $1,000; others received a lump sum of $6,500 up front, and then $500 per month; and a third group received only $50 per month.

    After six months, the percentage of participants in all three groups who were living in their own apartment or house went up substantially. Those receiving the lump sum payment and monthly allowance showed the greatest impact. Thirty-five per cent of them went from being unhoused to living in their own house or apartment.

    Can we afford to have such programs in our communities? The question should really be: can we afford not to?

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Tacoma guaranteed basic income pilot results released

    By Tacoma Weekly

    See original post here.

    Mayors for Guaranteed Income, Mayor Victoria Woodards, and the United Way of Pierce County welcomed the release of independent data on the Growing Resilience In Tacoma (GRIT) guaranteed income pilot, showcasing significant improvements in financial stability, a reduction in income volatility, an increase in stable, full-time employment, and less food insecurity than a control group of similar Tacoma residents.

    The GRIT pilot focused on families that are considered “asset-limited, income-constrained and employed” (ALICE). From December 2021 to December 2022, GRIT gifted $500 a month to 110 ALICE families in Tacoma. These dollars were unconditional and had no strings attached. Results of the GRIT pilot demonstrate that a modest, unrestricted cash investment can improve families’ financial stability, food security, well-being, and reduce poverty in our community.   

    Key findings include the following.

    Improved financial health: Recipients of guaranteed income increased their incomes above the control group by a statistically significant margin, which was sustained six months after payments stopped. They exhibited significant improvements in financial resilience, particularly in their ability to manage a $400 emergency expense. The percentage of the control group who had more than $500 in savings declined throughout the study, while the percent increased among guaranteed income recipients.

    Employment: Recipients of guaranteed income were significantly more likely to be employed across every time point evaluated. Additionally, data demonstrated stability of full-time employment among recipients (63%) over time relative to the control group (52%). The proportion of participants who identified as stay-at-home parents or caregivers remained almost 10 percent points higher in the control cohort relative to guaranteed income recipients across all time periods.

    Food security: This study period occurred during a period of historically high inflation and rising food costs. Although both groups experienced food insecurity, the control group consistently reported higher levels of food insecurity across various measures. The percentage of control group participants expressing concerns about sufficient food availability rose from 45% at the study’s onset to 68% by its conclusion. In contrast, the concerns of recipients grew less substantially, from 42% to 53% during the same timeframe. 

    Housing affordability and quality: Recipients consistently displayed a reduced cost burden compared to those in the control group throughout the duration of the study, and a greater proportion of recipients reported transitioning into higher-quality homes and more desirable neighborhoods compared to the control group.

    Woodards, who championed the pilot program, said “I’m very proud to see these results, which confirm that our initial investment had a meaningful impact on the lives of the people who received the guaranteed income. As we continue to distribute recurring cash support with GRIT 2.0, I hope that Tacoma can serve as an example that informs state and federal policy efforts to address poverty.”

    One participant in the GRIT pilot explained the benefit, stating, “I feel like people view [people receiving benefits] as being lazy or just taking advantage of the system, and I’m like, well, that’s not necessarily the case for everybody. A lot of them have disabilities or things like that that prevent them from being able to make a reliable or stable income. And I’m in the position where I could probably benefit from assistance, I have a degree and everything, and I’m still kind of struggling to not be homeless on the street in this market.”

    Following the successful conclusion of its pilot, the City of Tacoma and the United Way of Pierce County expanded the initiative. GRIT 2.0 is a partnership with the Washington State Economic Services Administration, the City of Tacoma, Pierce County Government, and United Way of Pierce County designed to boost the financial security of low-income, single heads of households with children. 

    “So many people are working very hard but don’t make enough to be able to get ahead,” said Michael D. Tubbs, founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. “The GRIT program targeted families who are largely excluded from our social safety net, because they earn just a little too much to qualify for federal benefits, but still don’t receive a living wage. Giving these families a hand up is common sense, and data shows it’s good policy for the city, too.”

    Tacoma’s pilot is affiliated with Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a coalition of over 150 mayors and growing. The research findings from Tacoma build upon similar results from the mayor-led guaranteed income programs in Stockton, CA; Saint Paul, MN; Cambridge, MA; Paterson, NJ; Richmond VA; Baltimore, MD; Los Angeles, CA; and Birmingham, AL where researchers found increased employment, greater financial stability, more parent-child time, and a better level of overall well-being.  

    “The GRIT pilot has proven what we’ve long believed: a modest, unconditional cash investment can transform lives. From improving financial stability and employment opportunities to reducing food insecurity, these results show the profound impact of investing directly in ALICE families working hard but remaining vulnerable,” said Dona Ponepinto, president and CEO of United Way of Pierce County. “This is a step forward in addressing poverty and creating pathways to a stronger, more resilient community.”

    Read the full report at uwpc.org.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • A UBI program in Florida hopes to keep people out of prison through direct payments. They say it’s changing lives

    By Kevin Scott

    See original post here.

    Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: What does a guaranteed income look like for recently released prisoners?

    Kevin Scott: It’s freedom, opportunity, dignity. For many prisoners getting released, they’re not just ‘re-entering’ the world. They’re entering for the very first time. So a guaranteed income means opportunity. Not even a new start – just a start, for a lot of folks.

    Many people don’t realise that it costs money to get freedom from prison these days. When someone gets released, they might have court debt, restitution payments, probation fees, or drug testing. All these things have a price.

    Most people come out of prison with an extraordinary amount of debt, in addition to the ordinary costs of rent, food, clothing, things like that. If you’re unable to make those payments, you will be re-incarcerated, just for not having enough money.

    We use this phrase all the time: ‘you are too poor to be free’. It’s the unfortunate truth, and it happens all the time. People go in and out of prison because of poverty, and they stay in poverty because of prison. It’s a revolving door.

    When we came across the opportunity to do a guaranteed income project, we said, what if we did it for people who’ve been incarcerated? What if we could interrupt that revolving door? And that’s been our intervention for the last few years.

    BTS: How does the programme work in practice?

    Kevin: Anyone who’s been released in the last six months is eligible, but we try to get people as close to release as we can. Folks put their names in a hat, and we do a random draw. Each person that gets selected receives $1,000 in the first month and then $600 a month for the next 11 months after that.

    It is unconditional, no strings attached. People can use the money for anything they want. We believe very much that people are the experts in their own lives and should be able to make their own decisions.

    BTS: Has this money made a difference to people’s lives?

    Kevin: Absolutely. We’re currently collaborating with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania to document the evidence, and we’ll have some really compelling findings to share soon. But I don’t need the numbers to tell me what I’ve already seen with my own eyes.

    Guaranteed income has increased people’s employment opportunities. It has increased people’s housing stability. It has increased people’s joy, their well-being, their happiness, and their ease. It has reduced stress. Among our recipients, we saw a 43% decrease in money-related probation violations. Just that alone is enough.

    Hope goes a long way for people who are accustomed to hopelessness

    A lot of folks have reported back that it’s made them feel like a human being, like they can be trusted. In some cases, people have spent decades inside an institution that required 100% compliance and control all day. People would tell me: I’m treated like an animal, I’m cussed at. I’m starved, I’m burned, I’m frozen.

    Imagine going from that to having someone take a genuine interest in your life, and being given full latitude to spend this money. It means so much. The material things are great, but for many it’s about being treated like a human being for the first time in a very long time.

    BTS: Can you tell us about how guaranteed income has helped any of your beneficiaries to break the prison-poverty cycle?

    Kevin: I’ll tell you a little story about Murray. He grew up in a low-income family in the south. He’s Black and gay, and had to fight just to survive. He ended up having to commit crime to sustain his livelihood, and was in and out of prison many times.

    The fourth time he was sent to prison, he was told they’d made a mistake – it was literally a mathematical error. So he was released, and he told us that in the van coming home he was crying, because he was afraid for his future. He said he knew he’d end up back in prison soon enough, because crime was his only option for survival.

    That’s when he heard about our programme. He applied and was randomly selected. Murray told us it was the first time he’d had hope in his life. He said he felt valued in a way he’d never felt before. It caused a major shift in his perspective.

    Murray had had hip surgery in prison, and has a hard time standing and walking now as a result. So when he got his first payment, he bought a mobility scooter at a local thrift store. The scooter meant he could get around town, use the bus, and go to visit his sick mother. It opened up his entire world.

    With his second payment, he went to the store and bought ingredients to make 100 lunches, and he gave them out to people who were living on the street, because he himself had been homeless in the past. Murray just took it upon himself to show kindness with scant resources. He didn’t want to feel like a burden.

    And he’s been free ever since he received that first payment – it’s been several years now. So this is what the money does. Because the income is unconditional, Murray could use it for whatever he wanted. We give people total agency – or at least, we acknowledge the agency they already had. They give it to themselves really.

    BTS: How could this change the criminal justice system on a systemic level?

    Kevin: The majority of people in prison come from poverty to begin with. Once they’re incarcerated, they become even poorer. Their families are also poorer. Guaranteed income gives somebody a chance to take a breath and to stop living in a place of crisis, so they can start making some choices from a place of power instead. That interrupts the cycle of prison and poverty. And we’ve seen that happen with our folks’ lives.

    Even if the human cost of prisons doesn’t mean much to our policy makers, it’s at least in their financial interest to take that seriously

    When folks get out of prison in Florida, the most they get is $50. Their bodies have been put into cages for years, then the door is opened and they’re handed a $50 bill – and told to go create their lives. What are you going to do with that?

    There have been measures to increase what’s called gate money around the country, but even if you get handed $200 or $1,000, you’re still pretty doomed. People should have a proper cushion when they come out.

    BTS: Do you think programmes like yours could reduce spending on prisons?

    Kevin: We have the highest incarceration rate on the planet by a lot. We are the heavyweight champions of incarceration; an astronomical amount of money is spent on it. The prison-industrial complex obviously has profits attached to it as well. Never forget that for every person behind bars there’s some individual or company on the other end that is benefiting. It is in someone’s interest to keep those beds full.

    But it’s a huge waste of money for the state. Putting someone in prison because they don’t have enough money is the most expensive, least efficient solution. In Florida, it costs $28,000 a year to keep somebody in prison. With the guaranteed income programme, we’re just giving somebody $7,600. If that keeps even a small percentage of the population out of prison, it creates a massive public savings.

    So even if the human cost of prisons doesn’t mean much to our policy makers, it’s at least in their financial interest to take that seriously.

    BTS: This makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much for sharing these powerful stories with us. Do you have anything to add?

    Kevin: That these people are human beings, with real, complex lives. And they suffer for a long time because of their experiences in prison. There’s one more story I’d like to share with you. It’s about a woman called Venettia.

    She experienced terrible domestic abuse while I knew her. I knew her while she was staying at a homeless shelter, and then after she had come out of prison. After her release, Venettia put her name down to be selected for Just Income. She was randomly selected and received her payments.

    It allowed her to take a breath, and she was able to extract herself from an abusive relationship. The money gave her leverage to make a move for herself. She was able to address her addiction. She told me, “this money got me clean”.

    She reconnected with her children and with other members of her family. She was able to get certified for work. The money drastically shifted Venettia’s life, and it was just because somebody believed in her.

    We spoke to her about how her life had changed, and she said, “hope goes a long way for people who are accustomed to hopelessness”. There could not be a more succinct encapsulation of why we do what we do.

    For me, that’s all I needed when I got out of prison. That’s all Venettia needed. Just believe in me. Just see me as a person and let me show you what I can do.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • An artist used his $500 monthly basic income to build his hip hop career: ‘It’s not feasible to create art in a place of distress.’

    By Allie Kelly

    See original post here.

    Tarli has been making music for most of his life, but found it increasingly difficult to afford his bills and fund his career as a performer.

    “It’s not feasible to be a starving artist,” Tarli — who preferred to use his artist name — told Business Insider. “It’s not feasible to create art in a place of distress.”

    By day, the 36-year-old works for a housing agency. By night, he’s a hip hop artist playing on stages throughout the Twin Cities. When Tarli received his first $500 check from the Springboard for the Arts guaranteed income pilot, he felt immediate relief.

    Springboard for the Arts’ program gave 75 artists like Tarli monthly cash payments of $500 for 18 months, and was initially set to end in summer 2024. Eligible participants had to be artists — musicians, dancers, painters, creatives, or culture bearers — and live in the St. Paul or the rural county of Otter Tail. Participants can spend the money however they chose, no strings attached. The pilot is funded by private donors and the McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based foundation focused arts, culture, and science.

    In September, the program announced a five-year extension. The 75 artists will continue receiving payments, and 25 more artists in Otter Tail — about 200 miles from St. Paul — will receive $500 monthly starting in 2025. All 100 participants will also have access to personal finance and housing counseling services.

    Over 100 guaranteed basic income pilots that have been launched across the US as an approach to poverty reduction, some of which also focus on artists. Previous participants have told BI they used cash payments to pay household bills, afford essentials, pursue job training, or buy art supplies.

    For Tarli, $500 a month was the boost he needed to reach “flexibility and freedom” beyond affording basics like rent and groceries.

    “From my experience, when finances are iffy, the first thing that goes is your art,” he said.

    Monthly cash helped Tarli invest in his music career

    Tarli likens his work to performers J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar, music that has “hitting beats, but always has a message to it,” he said. He also directs a local artists collective of singers, DJs, and musicians called “The Tribe” who tour and perform together.

    Still, Tarli said it’s difficult to make a steady income as an artist. Because of this, he’s continued to hold his full-time job so he can more comfortably afford rent, food, healthcare, and other essentials alongside his music career. Tarli declined to share how much he earns.

    Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics published in May 2023 found that the annual mean wage for US independent artists and performers is $66,180. The bottom 25% of these artists, however, make less than $38,000 a year — placing many near the federal poverty line.

    Tarli used his monthly guaranteed basic income to invest in his hip hop career by buying a portable sound system, advertising performances, paying for studio space, compensating his collaborators, and affording lodging when his music group was touring.

    He’s looking forward to going on tour again next spring. And, with the program’s extension, Tarli will continue receiving guaranteed basic income through early 2028.

    “The sky is the limit for me, as far as using that money, or even saving that money up to make a larger purchase,” he said.

    Participants in other guaranteed basic income programs like Springboard for the Arts often report that monthly payments helped them land higher-paying jobs and afford household expenses. However, the cash payment model is temporary, and it’s not yet clear how GBI shapes participants’ financial stability in the years after their programs end.

    Tarli said he’s grateful to have a day job, but he hopes to continue transitioning his music into a more stable career. Cash payments helped him move toward that goal, he said.

    “When artists ask for a decent wage, it’s needed,” Tarli said. “It’s not because they’re trying to get rich, it’s because they actually need this — not only to sustain sustain themselves — but to also reinvest in their artistry.”

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Nearly every basic income pilot studied has shown higher rates of employment

    By PR Newswire

    See original post here.

    WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — More than one dozen academic studies have found guaranteed income programs led to several key benefits, including higher rates of employment, improved financial stability, better housing and food security, and more time spent together as families.

    A guaranteed income refers to monthly cash payments made to low-income individuals, with no strings attached. Around 150 cities are or have recently run guaranteed income pilots, and 60 of those are affiliated with Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (MGI), a network of mayors and city and county officials dedicated to creating best practices for this policy intervention. Several leading research institutions have collaborated with MGI cities and counties to study these guaranteed income pilots, and full results have been released for thirteen cities whose pilots have completed.

    Nearly every pilot studied has shown higher rates of employment, in direct contradiction to the most common criticism from opponents. In Stockton, CA recipients found full-time employment at more than twice the rate of non-recipients. Paterson, NJ‘s year-long guaranteed income program showed a rise in gig work and self-employment, and recipients increased their income significantly. In Saint Paul, MN researchers found an increase in employment that lasted after the program. Cambridge, MA‘s program for single caregivers showed an increase in the employment rate from 36% at baseline to 40% after 12 months, while employment fell amongst the control group. Birmingham, AL‘s pilot for single mothers showed that participants experienced significantly fewer issues at work due to childcare challenges—44 percent fewer recipients reported having been late for work in the past month due to childcare issues than did working mothers in the control group. Read more about employment outcomes here.

    Increased parent-child time is another common finding, and several cities have demonstrated better outcomes for children because of it. In Cambridge, MA, households receiving guaranteed income reported fewer school disciplinary actions and fewer instances of absenteeism and truancy, and more children placed in the Advanced Placement classes among the recipient group, compared to the control group. In Los Angeles, CA, parents receiving guaranteed income were significantly more likely to maintain their children’s extracurricular activities and reported more time for parenting.  In Richmond, VA, recipients reported being able to make deliberate parenting choices, key for healthy child development. An analysis of four Southern cities–Atlanta, GA, Birmingham, AL, Louisville, KY and Shreveport, LA–found positive impacts in 5 key areas: basic needs, educational outcomes, work-life balance, parent-child relationships, and parents’ mental health. Read more about parent-child outcomes here.

    Greater financial stability has been found across all studies, and other notable results include greater housing and food security, better mental health, reduced exposure to intimate partner violence, among other important quality of life markers.

    The thirteen pilots randomly selected a fixed number of people to receive guaranteed income out of a larger pool of qualified applicants, and most included a control group of people who also met the qualifications. Most pilots were based on income level alone, but some programs were targeted to specific, vulnerable populations. Cambridge’s program was for single caregivers making less than 80% of the area median income, and Birmingham’s focused on single mothers specifically. Ventura County, California opted to support foster youth with a guaranteed income as they transitioned out of state care. In Denver, Colorado, the Basic Income Project focused on people without housing.

    “What makes these guaranteed income pilots especially meaningful is the democratic process that our pilots naturally undergo, as each municipality elects leaders who promise to tackle the issues that the community prioritizes,” said Michael D. Tubbs, founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. “Research shows that recipients are able to pull themselves out of poverty and create economic stability for themselves and their families. With polls showing that a majority of American voters – 62% – support a federal guaranteed income, it’s time to take this from pilots to national policy.”

    Ultimately, the collaboration between cities, counties and researchers will produce the largest body of guaranteed income research ever. Read more about pilot-specific results, and find new studies as they are released, at www.guaranteedincomeworks.org/research, and at the Denver Basic Income Project, the Urban Institute (for Austin, TX) and the Arlington Community Foundation (Arlington, VA).

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • How Does Basic Income Impact Artists’ Lives?

    By Maya Pontone

    See original post here.

    Early findings from a guaranteed income program for artists across New York State reveal that such initiatives can provide crucial support for artists’ financial stability, professional advancement, and individual well-being. 

    While more comprehensive results are slated to be released at the end of the year, preliminary outcomes show that when artists receive guaranteed income, they generally concentrate on addressing outstanding debt, bills, and increasing their personal savings. They also have more freedom to work on their practice and more time for caregiving responsibilities. 

    The report was compiled by Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY), a $125 million guaranteed income and work opportunity initiative that began in 2021 and is chiefly funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. Under the program, CRNY provided 2,400 artists across New York no-strings-attached monthly payments of $1,000 for 18 consecutive months, prioritizing individuals who are acutely impacted by institutional barriers to financial security based on their race, physical ability, sexual orientation, citizenship status, and caregiving tasks.

    On average, the survey found that 17% of the guaranteed monthly payments were used to pay off debt, principally outstanding credit card balances and loans and mortgages. Furthermore, artists saved approximately $150 more each month and put nearly $140 of the payments toward expenses like rent and utilities. The initiative also showed that participants generally reported feeling improved mental and emotional health in comparison to those who did not receive guaranteed monthly payments.

    CRNY’s report includes brief testimonies from named and anonymous artists who participated in the program, further illuminating how financial constraints continue to impede their work and day-to-day lives.

    “Going through a breast cancer diagnosis during a pandemic was the most difficult experience of my life,” shared one anonymous participant quoted in the report, who explained that even after public spaces reopened following the COVID-19 pandemic, their career “was still at a standstill” due to a two-year battle against cancer. 

    “Guaranteed Income gave me the support I needed to slowly build my life back, become strong and healthy again, and has truly led me back to this industry feeling safe, valued and supported,” the participant wrote.

    In an interview with Hyperallergic, Maura Cuffie-Peterson, CRNY’s director of strategic initiatives, explained that critics of guaranteed income programs generally “claim that they disincentivize work.”

    “Critics would say that people don’t work when they receive guaranteed income and that they feel less accountable to their communities,” Cuffie-Peterson said. “Our report shows that not only are artists working with a guaranteed income, but they’re really shaping work that is meaningful to them and in their community life.”

    The report’s findings add to survey results released by CRNY this summer that showed a majority of NY artists are in precarious financial positions, currently earning significantly below living wage standards.

    “When done ethically and in collaboration of those who are directly impacted, research can lead us to better designed programs and even policy solutions,” Cuffie-Peterson said, adding that guaranteed income programs could be more beneficial if they ran for longer periods of time.

    As an example, she cited Minnesota arts organization Springboard for the Arts’s recent announcement that it is extending its guaranteed income pilot for artists to five years and offering additional financial counseling services.

    “It’s less what should be researched next, but more how these things that are all being researched are building up into something bigger, more impactful, and more meaningful to more people,” Cuffie-Peterson said.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Aisha Nyandoro Showed America What Happens When You Give Mothers Cash

    By Belinda Luscombe

    See original post here.

    In 2017, Aisha Nyandoro came to a sobering realization. As founder and CEO of the nonprofit Springboard to Opportunities in Jackson, Miss., she was committed to helping lift families in local public housing into the next phase—a place of their own. But her organization wasn’t moving the needle. “We were doing everything, from after-school programs, work-training programs, mommy and me, reading programs, all of these different activities and services we were providing on site,” says Nyandoro, 45. “But we were not actually seeing families successfully transition out of affordable housing, and that was important to us, because that was important to the families.”

    So her organization spent some time talking to the mothers and came up with a solution that was at once extremely simple and very complicated. These mothers needed cash. Not in the form of housing vouchers. Not in the form of credits that could be used at a grocery store. Not in the form of free health care. Just plain old moolah. Loot. Legal tender.

    Money—the type that can be spent on anything—has been out of favor as a method of helping impoverished Americans. Mississippi has been so allergic to giving its citizens cash that Congress held hearings in September to understand how the state mismanaged federal funds for needy families. The year before Nyandoro came to her realization, fewer than 2% of Mississippi’s low-income families who applied for welfare payments from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program had been approved. Meanwhile money from that fund has been lavished on almost anything else, including a $5 million volleyball stadium, payments to sports celebrities, and boot-camp-style fitness programs. And Mississippi is not alone. “We got caught, but I don’t believe that we are the only state that is using TANF funds erroneously,” says Nyandoro.

    In 2018, Nyandoro founded the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, a fund that gave 20 mothers in Jackson $1,000 a month for a year. Any Black mother living in the housing complexes that Springboard served could apply; the first 20 recipients’ names were drawn out of a box. Nyandoro called each one personally. She physically signed each check, put it in an envelope, and gave it to recipients in time for Christmas. 

    This modest program was the first guaranteed-income project in the 21st century, and nobody knew quite what to expect. Not all of the mothers flourished—getting people out of poverty is rarely a linear process—but most did. They paid off debts, fixed cars, made sure everyone had enough to eat, enrolled their children in activities, invested in their own business, went back to school, and socked away what they could for the future. Most of all, they got to think about something besides bills. They had enough stability to plan.

    This fall Magnolia will welcome its sixth set of mothers, this time numbering more than 100. These moms will also get a 529 educational savings account for each child with $1,000 deposited in it. So far the trust has directly helped more than 400 families, but more importantly, it has provided a proof of concept for how to administer such a cash-provision program. There are now 150 similar initiatives around America. The Magnolia Mother’s model was echoed in the expanded child-tax-credit payments that lifted millions of kids out of poverty during the pandemic. The idea has been championed by Vice President Kamala Harris, who has proposed a tax credit of $6,000 in the first year of an infant’s life followed by an annual credit of up to $3,600, and vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, who has floated a tax credit of $5,000 per child annually. Even the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the agency that provides housing vouchers, is exploring the possibilities of cash.

    “I think of her as spurring the current momentum that has led to these thousand flowers blooming all over the country,” says University of Michigan professor of public policy Luke Shaefer, whose book $2 a Day, co-authored with Kathryn Edin, was also an influential work among advocates of cash assistance. “She was the first one to get it off the ground.” 

    The lift was considerable. Shaefer has found opposition to cash assistance to be a rare nonpartisan issue. Conservatives oppose it because they believe it’s expensive, disincentivizes work, and people will fritter it away. Progressives oppose it, he has noticed, because they feel like it might jeopardize funds for the work they’re doing in social services.

    “If we give people money, what will happen? I myself had that question,” says Natalie Foster, president and co-founder of the Economic Security Project and author of The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy. “The evidence made it very clear that people continue working. People are working incredibly hard in this economy just to get by, and a guaranteed income creates a bit more breathing room. Study after study after study has shown that to be true.”

    But back in 2018, Nyandoro had a tough time getting donors to understand why her approach was important. Even worse, she kept running up against the narrative that poor Black mothers couldn’t be trusted with the flexibility of cash. “The amount of toxicity that, quite frankly, I had to take on just trying to help people understand what this work was was really probably one of the darkest times of my life,” she says. “It’s when I truly realized how disconnected the majority of people are from people.” She made a last-ditch call to one of her existing Springboard donors (who does not wish to be named), who agreed to fund the pilot program.

    One recipient that first year who particularly affected Nyandoro was a mother whose children had only met their grandfather on FaceTime because he lived in Pittsburgh. The mama—as Nyandoro calls the women she works with—used some of the cash to take her children to visit him on spring break. “She didn’t fly, she didn’t do anything luxurious like that,” recalls Nyandoro. “She just made sure that her car was in decent working order, and she drove to Pittsburgh so her kids could meet their grandfather for the first time. Seeing what that did for herself and her father and her kids, it just broke me.” In a later program, a mother used her first check to pay off her $300 debt at the local community college so she could resume the phlebotomy course she could not attend until her back fees were paid.  

    Nyandoro was raised in Mississippi in a family rich in civic-mindedness. Her grandmother, L.C. Dorsey, the daughter of sharecroppers, left school to get married when she got pregnant at 17, but was drawn into the civil rights movement after she became friends with Fannie Lou Hamer. She helped start the first rural community health center in America, advocated for civil rights and prison reform, and served on President Jimmy Carter’s National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity. She also resumed her education and went on to get a PhD in social work. Nyandoro’s mother was a social worker and her father an elder in the AME Church; community issues were frequent topics of discussion around the dinner table. “I always knew I’d work in advocacy, because of how I grew up,” says Nyandoro.

    Today, Black families have the second-highest poverty rate in the U.S., after only Native Americans, with 21.2% living below the poverty line. And 27% of Black families with single mothers live in poverty, according to Census Bureau data. Nevertheless, the hardy stereotype of the single Black mother as a welfare queen, living large on public benefits, still affects so much of the way government assistance is distributed. “Black mothers get demonized,” says Shaefer. “I think Aisha is really a big part of stopping that train and moving it in a different direction, in terms of a different vision of Black motherhood and a different vision of the safety net.” 

    Mothers who get assistance from Magnolia do not want to be on the program permanently. “Time and time again, our mamas tell us that one year is enough, because they really just use it as a year of breathing room, as a year of planning and being very strategic in how they go about doing their work,” says Nyandoro. “They also say they don’t want to become dependent on it.” 

    The real difference between cash-assistance programs and aid that is tied to specific needs, such as housing vouchers, is the amount of agency recipients have. Giving out cash suggests that the donor believes the beneficiary knows how best to address her own needs. Nyandoro, who has now won a slew of awards and is in demand as an expert on anti-poverty initiatives, often talks about dignity, which to people with enough sounds like a luxury item, but to these women means something more profound–that they can be trusted, that they know what’s optimal for their families, and that they can make decisions without seeking anyone’s permission or approval. 

    “We don’t understand how simple poverty is, and we try to make it overcomplicated,” she says. “Poverty is really about a lack of financial resources and about systems that we have all allowed to be put in place because we all benefit from them. But the narrative we tell ourselves is that people are poor because they choose to be poor, and are making bad financial decisions, and if they made better financial decisions, they wouldn’t be poor. This is not true.” With the work of Magnolia Mother’s Trust, Nyandoro has the receipts to prove it.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Unconditional monthly cash improves lives in South Africa, study finds

    By Shaun Smillie

    See original post here.

    • For the past two years, 100 unemployed technical college graduates in KwaZulu-Natal have been part of a study in which they receive R2,000 per month which they could spend as they wish.
    • The initiative is called the Unconditional Cash Transfer Project.
    • It is funded by the German Catholic Bishops’ Organisation (Misereor) and is being implemented by the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group.
    • The organisers have already found that the cash transfer has improved the livelihoods of many participants. By March this year 27% of participants had started some form of income generating activity.
    • A programme coordinator says that a universal grant should be seen as a way of making an investment in the economy, through investment in people.

    Soon after graduating from a Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college in KwaZulu-Natal, Nqobile Zuma found herself, like millions of other young South Africans, unemployed.

    Despite receiving her N5 in electrical and motor mechanics, Zuma still struggled to find a job. Then the 29-year-old got an unusual opportunity.

    For two years she would receive R2,000 per month and she could spend this money how she wished.

    Zuma became part of a social experiment where 100 participants, who are graduates from TVET colleges in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, have been receiving a cash transfer each month since October 2022. Their last payment will be at the end of September.

    The initiative is called the Unconditional Cash Transfer Project and is funded by the German Catholic Bishops’ Organisation (Misereor). The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group, (PMBEJD) and the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference have been responsible for implementing the initiative.

    The aim of the initiative was to determine whether transferring R2,000 cash to an unemployed person, who had completed post school education programmes, would lead them to create an economic livelihood. This is something that the PMBEJD has pushed for a long time.

    The advocacy group has been releasing a household affordability index which tracks the cost of 44 food items typically used by low-income families from several cities and towns in South Africa. This index has illustrated the increasing burden of rising food and energy costs for these families.

    “We need to rethink [universal grants] as a way of making an investment in the economy, through investment in people,” says PMBEJD’s programme co-ordinator Mervyn Abrahams.

    According to Abrahams, many of the participants were at first extremely sceptical about the initiative and were reluctant to take part. “That’s indicative of there being so many scams,” says Abrahams.

    Does the unconditional grant improve people’s lives?

    So far, the organisers have found that the cash grant has had a positive effect in allowing some of the participants to launch economic livelihoods.

    By March this year, 27% of recipients had started some form of income generating activity.

    Zuma was one of them. At first, she tried setting up a computer business, charging learners R200 to teach coding and computer literacy. But this fell through when their parents couldn’t pay her.

    Zuma then decided to try farming on a hectare of land near her home in rural Impendle in rural KwaZulu-Natal in February this year. She is growing potatoes, spinach and onions.

    She used the money from the cash grant towards getting fencing and a water tank. She is in the process of expanding her cultivation. She sells the vegetables she grows to local supermarkets.

    Another participant, Ntokozo Mkhize, used her grant to kickstart a perfume selling business which she runs from home. “I advertise through my phone on WhatsApp,” she said, adding that she is still looking for employment and uses some of the money to apply for jobs.

    The grant was found to be useful in helping not only the participants but their families in securing full time work. “It is quite an expensive occupation [looking for work] because you need data and airtime. Then you need transport money and money to buy a nice shirt or pair of shoes for when you go for your interview,” Abrahams explained.

    Some of the other participants started selling clothes, set up a gardening service and even opened a piggery, said Abrahams.

    Others involved in the pilot used their money to assist in paying for their siblings’ school transport and uniforms. Some grant money was also used to renovate and extend family homes.

    One recipient had to use her grant to replace the income lost from her grandmother’s old age pension. Abrahams said that when asked, 73% of families told them that they were no longer running out of money during the month.

    A universal grant would boost the economy

    Initiatives like this are not new. Universal grant studies have been run before in a number of countries.

    Isobel Frye, the executive director of the Social Policy Initiative (SPI) said that there have been at least 300 in the last couple of decades.

    The Social Policy Initiative aims to alleviate poverty through social policies. It has been calling for the introduction of an unconditional universal monthly grant in South Africa.

    The SPI has researched the economics and believes that a R1,500 universal grant to every South African resident, including refugees and registered asylum seekers, would create about 2 million jobs, and grow the economy by 5.2% a year. There would be other spin offs too, according to Frye. “A Finnish pilot found that people were mentally better off; they were happier,” she said.

    As the Unconditional Cash Transfer Project winds down this month, Abrahams said he would like to expand the project and see it rolled out in other provinces, and in both urban and rural settings.

    “There’s a whole range of things we need to look at, like the kinds of benefits that we can see, and even the benefits that we can’t see.”

    “Then we can present it to policy makers for consideration as another tool towards expanding economic activity in the country,” said Abrahams.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • The basic income myth: cash discourages work

    By Allie Kelly

    See original post here.

    Taniquewa Brewster is training to be a doula. The mom of five knows both how joyful and overwhelming a baby can be, and she wants to improve birth outcomes for pregnant Texans.

    While earning her doula certificate, Brewster is working full-time as an assistant property manager at an income-based housing unit. The 39-year-old said she earned the position after being promoted from her role as a leasing agent, a change she said was only possible because of guaranteed basic income.

    She had previously been patching together low-paying part-time work to get by.

    “I was working as hard as I could, working overtime,” Brewster said. “That’s keeping me away from my family. That’s keeping me away from things that I can be doing — even going back to school — because I have to work so hard to just cover rent.”

    From September 2022 to August 2023, she received $1,000 monthly through Austin’s UpTogether pilot. The cash payments gave her breathing room: she said the money helped her afford household bills, along with the real estate and doula training she needed to land higher paying jobs.

    Guaranteed basic income programs are gaining momentum across the US as an approach to poverty reduction. The model offers participants recurring cash payments for a set period of time, with no strings attached. Like in Austin’s pilot, many programs are directed at households that live near the federal poverty line.

    Despite GBI’s growing popularity with some policymakers and economic security experts, it continues to face opposition. Business Insider has covered basic income bans, lawsuits over GBI funding, and criticism that giving people cash discourages participants from working — one of the most common critiques.

    Some experts, however, have a different view: Financial support frequently offers participants a leg-up in their careers. This is in line with results from most of America’s GBI pilots.

    Since the Austin program ended and Brewster started her new role, she estimates her monthly income has increased by over $3,000. She said her job stability helped her afford essentials like groceries and healthcare, and allowed her to spend more time with her children.

    “I know it’s great to have that talent and to know how to do things,” she said. “But when you have that certification behind it, it just helps you to move up in the company or in whatever you do.”

    Basic income critics say cash discourages work

    Billionaires, politicians, and financial leaders have criticized basic income programs, saying that cash payments could encourage laziness among participants. Others add that having an extra monthly income could dissuade people from having a job.

    “Do we just get born and get money from the government?” Arizona State Rep. John Gillette previously told BI. “I think the Founding Fathers would say that is very contrary to our capitalist system and encouraging people to work.”

    Sometimes results do show that participants work fewer hours or drop multiple jobs during their GBI program. For example, in Illinois and Texas’ OpenResearch study — which examined the effects of two GBI programs that were funded by Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI — employment rates fell in the second and third years among the participants compared with the control group. The pilot gave 3,000 low-income families $1,000 a month for three years, beginning in 2019.

    When conducting guaranteed basic income pilots, researchers typically gather data on participant spending, housing outcomes, food access, mental health, job security, and weekly working hours. This data is gathered throughout a program’s run and after its conclusion via participant surveys and is often compared to a control group of people not receiving cash payments.

    Sukhi Samra — the executive director of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a national advocacy network — told BI that measuring employment trends can be challenging because it doesn’t capture the individualized benefits of GBI.

    It may look like participants are working fewer hours or fewer jobs, but often, Samra said those roles are more stable and higher-paying. Although job numbers declined in the OpenResearch case, the average participant income increased, researchers found. The study speculated the income boost could be due to participants having more flexibility over their employment choices.

    “Sometimes being able to work less does have profound impacts for families,” Samra said. “Especially when you’re talking about parents being able to spend more time with their children, being able to obtain a professional license or degree, or take care of an elderly parent.”

    More than a dozen guaranteed income pilots overseen by Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, like in Stockton and Baltimore, showed an overall increase in employment among participants. Other pilots, like one in Denver, showed no statistically significant impact on employment rates. Few programs show negative job outcomes.

    BI has heard anecdotally from participants that cash payments helped them pay for the childcare they needed to be focused at work, leading to promotions. Others said $500 or $1,000 a month was the boost they needed to drop several lower-paying gigs in favor of one higher-paying full-time job, or reduce their working hours so they could pursue higher education or job training. Some leave their jobs to start their own small businesses.

    “The benefits of that sort of compound over time, and aren’t really captured in the nuances of the data,” Samra said.

    Still, guaranteed basic income programs reflect short-term results. There is limited research on participant job outcomes in the months and years after their payments end. Participant employment — or unemployment — might also be impacted by outside factors, like the changing labor market, a person’s family situation, or shifts to the local cost of living. Most GBI participants need to continue working to make ends meet.

    Participants say basic income helped them afford job training, land higher-paying roles

    Cepia Harper, 41, just began her second year as a middle school English teacher. Her favorite lesson to teach is essay writing, helping students learn how to craft the perfect thesis statement.

    Harper began teaching shortly after enrolling in a Georgia-based guaranteed basic income program, In Her Hands. The program offered 650 participants — who were all low-income Black women — $20,400 over two years, ending in spring 2024.

    Along with helping cover household bills and unexpected expenses, Harper said the money allowed her to get her education credentials. She had previously been cobbling together a couple of retail jobs to make ends meet.

    “I’ve never had it where I could just go home to my own kids, pick them up from practice,” she said. “They all play sports, and I could never leave work to go to a game.”

    More predictable hours means Harper can spend more time with her family. Her annual income has risen by about $13,000 since she began teaching, she said, so she no longer has to work multiple jobs.

    And, as participants use their cash payments to build careers, Asya Howlette said they are more likely to boost local economies. As the director of the New Orleans Mayor’s Office of Youth and Families, Howlette has noticed the trend in her own city, where she helped oversee a recent GBI program focused on teenagers and young adults disconnected from work and school.

    “It’s improving our economy because all of the money that these young people were using is going right back into our economy,” she previously told BI. “It’s not like they’re sitting on a lot of cash, they’re spending it right back in our grocery stores, they’re putting it right back in our small businesses.”

    While GBI isn’t meant to serve as a paycheck replacement, Samra said can be a financial safety net: “We are allowing folks to stabilize and to then plan for the future,” she added.

    Being able to afford training for more lucrative jobs in real estate and maternal care gave Brewster — the mother of five — financial confidence.

    “It really motivated me,” she said of her GBI program. “Because I knew that, once the money stopped, what would I do afterward?”

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • The director of Sam Altman’s basic income study says one of the most interesting results was an increased interest in starting a business

    By Lakshmi Varanasi

    See original post here.

    What happens when you give people $1,000 a month? They start thinking about launching a business.

    Earlier this month, the nonprofit OpenResearch published the results of a study in which it gave $1,000 a month in cash payments to low-income residents in urban, suburban, and rural areas of the United States.

    The study, funded in part by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, was driven by Altman’s belief that recurring basic income payments might be necessary for an age when AI could make many jobs obsolete.

    Many in the AI industry support a so-called universal basic income, which would give regular payments to all people regardless of their financial status. Given the political hurdles such a program would face, many cities are experimenting with a guaranteed basic income on a smaller level instead. Altman’s study tested this version of a basic income.

    “So technically, this is not a UBI, because if it were, there would be no income requirement, no age requirement. Every single person within a community would get it. And obviously, that’s really difficult to test,” OpenResearch’s director, Elizabeth Rhodes, said on an episode of the New York Times podcast Hard Fork. “We’re testing more unconditional cash.”

    Most participants allocated their monthly stipends toward rent, transportation, and food. Over time, though, the money also contributed to a shift in their mindset.

    “One of the things that I found interesting was the growing interest in entrepreneurship and having ideas for businesses,” Rhodes said. “And in a lot of ways, I feel like it gave people some space to sit back and think about what would they do if they had more opportunities.”

    The reality is that many low-income Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, taking odd jobs, or overnight shifts. “There are a lot of people, I think, now that are just surviving and maybe work is not providing that sense of meaning and they don’t have those choices,” Rhodes said.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • These Coloradans experiencing homelessness were given different sums of money – no strings attached. Here’s what happened

    By Elaine Tassy

    See original post here.

    Hunter Ambrose expects a promotion from operations manager to store manager at Dollar Tree. With her raise, she might get some new furniture for the $1500-a-month, two-bedroom apartment where she lives with her kids in a scrappy, noisy complex in Aurora. 

    Dressed in jeans, her hair in a ponytail and her eyes tired, she was calling an Uber for her pre-teen son while making sure one of her two daughters, running around in a bright yellow oversized nightshirt, felt included during an interview with a reporter.

    “Can you say hi? Can you tell Elaine ‘hello’?” she said. She said goodbye to her son as he left to get in the ride-share, while simultaneously listening to her other kids playing in the back bedroom of the sparsely furnished home. 

    Around this time last year, the 31-year-old mom and her three kids were living out of her Kia, parked on the side of the road, and, when possible, renting a room in an Extended Stay hotel. 

    What happened in between? Lots of hard work, problem-solving and prayer – and the intervention of the Denver Basic Income Project, a research program at the University of Denver. 

    The goal of the $9 million study – funded by private philanthropies and the city of Denver – was to find out what would happen if people experiencing homelessness got a lump sum of money, no strings attached. Would it provide an immediate boost to their circumstances and launch them into housing? Or would it be spent in ways that left them no better off, housing-wise, than before?

    Ambrose was part of the study led by a nine-person research team, which began in October 2022. It included 820 adults experiencing homelessness who were given varying amounts of money with no questions asked about how they’d use it, in December 2022, January 2023, and February 2024. The study has recently been extended and researchers are currently raising funds to continue it for another six months.

    The team set up the study with three tiers. One group got $50 a month – that was the control group, of which Ambrose was a part. Another group got $1,000 a month, and the third got a lump sum of over $6,500 at the start of the study and $500 a month thereafter for the first year, $1,000 for the second. Participants also received a cell phone – paid for by the study – so researchers could check in with them more easily.

    The results surprised the researchers: the group getting $50 per month did as well as the group getting the most money. 

    “Probably our most surprising finding was we didn’t see a lot of differences there,” said Daniel Brisson, Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Housing and Homelessness at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. “In fact, our third group, which we call our active control group that received $50 a month, also seemed to do well, particularly in housing…. We expected the other two groups to do better than our comparison group, but in fact, people from all three groups did OK.” 

    The DU study is one of few in the US and Canada that poses the question of how being given money impacts homelessness. To get participants, researchers went to community-based organizations such as shelters to connect with people who were currently unhoused.

    The study found that:  

    • Regardless of which group participants were in, the opportunity to participate was seen as a blessing; 
    • The attention and support that came with the interview portion of the study gave participants hope; 
    • People receiving the highest amount of money reported both a reduction in stress and the ability to do things – such as get an education to train for a better-paying job – that they couldn’t have done without the support.  

    Some of the study’s limitations and challenges were:

    • Being in survival mode, unhoused people prioritize study participation lower than activities of survival (such as finding a space to feel safe or finding food, etc.), making keeping up with them sometimes tricky and lowering overall participation numbers;
    • Terms like “stress” and “safety” mean different things based on one’s housing status; and
    • The study only included those connected to community-based organizations, people already motivated to seek solutions out of homelessness. (“We wanted to [include those living on the streets not connected to community-based organizations] but it’s very expensive,” Brisson said. “It would be a much more expensive study if we were to be on the ground reaching out to people.”) 

    CPR News spoke with three of the 820 participants – one from each group – to see how being in the study impacted their housing situation. They were each interviewed in person in their current environments, after being interviewed first by phone. 

    Hunter Ambrose

    Hunter Elizabeth Ambrose, whose journey from having nowhere to go at night beside her car or a motel – to living in a two-bedroom apartment in Aurora – had been going on for most of her life. It began when she was placed in foster care as a toddler in Los Angeles, she said. 

    Throughout her childhood and adolescence, she bounced from group homes to foster families; at age 11, in one home she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by the spouse of her foster mother, she wrote in her self-published book, Relentless. 

    From there she started running away, she said. When she aged out of foster care after numerous placements, she did what she had to do to survive, and eventually came to Denver in search of her mother; she lived with her for a short while, she said, but her mother’s alcoholism and toxicity made life unbearable, so she left.

    In the years that followed, she said, she was able to accomplish some of her goals: she visited India, took some college courses, and became a notary public. With three kids by two fathers, one of whom she co-parents with, costs of being a single mom overwhelmed the salary she was able to earn, and with no family to help out, she fell into homelessness from time to time. 

    “There were so many times where I didn’t know what was going to happen next for me. I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “It was kind of traumatizing.”

    When she became a part of the study, she was in the Salvation Army’s shelter service network; they’d placed her in a hotel in Denver’s Central Park neighborhood with her children – a relief after they’d been living in her car for a period of time. Around November of last year, she learned of the Denver Basic Income Project study through the shelter. 

    Working as an assistant manager at the discount retail chain Dollar Tree, she’d hoped to get picked for one of the groups that received more money, but when she wasn’t, she was still glad to feel a part of something. Besides getting a $50 payment each month, she said the participation benefited her because when interviewed by the researchers for the qualitative portion of the study, she got attention and concern she wasn’t used to. For her, that was more meaningful than the money. 

    “It’s not like they completely changed my life, but they have been a part of my life for a few years now – from a place where I was in my homelessness, to seeing me fight through that and get out of the shelter and now in my own place and publishing my book and now becoming an assistant store manager. They were in my life through all those steps. So I really thank DBIP for just that – because having, just, a support system in some way, can help you to be like, ‘OK if this happened for me and this is good, I can keep hope that other good things will happen too.”

    Within six months of getting hired at Dollar Tree, she got promoted to operations manager and enjoyed the additional responsibilities and the $4 an-hour raise that bumped her pay up to about $20 an hour. During a recent visit to her apartment, while sitting on the balcony, she talked about a new job she was up for at a nearby school, but when that didn’t come through, she said she’d resume climbing the ladder at Dollar Tree, where she’s in the running to manage an entire store.

    With the shelter’s help, she found an apartment in Aurora, where she’d been for about six months. 

    When asked what she thought of the study findings – that people in her control group did about as well as those who got more money, it made sense to her. She said while she already had the energy and the moxie to figure things out, she still considered her participation a factor in transitioning out of homelessness because of the support through check-ins with researchers. 

    “And that’s why I did it – because I knew $50 wasn’t going to change anything … I think they helped bring hope to people who felt hopeless… not making you justify why you should receive this money, it gives people a sense of hope and that can make you keep going, people that … maybe feel that they are not accepted in society because they don’t check all the boxes,” she said.

    Now that things are going better, she said: “I feel like the sun is shining and I’m not in a storm anymore and I have peace in a way that I did it, whether that’s through all of this hard work and prayer and I feel more settled in myself.”

    Rosemarie Palafox

    Like Ambrose, Rosemarie Palafox’s challenges with housing stemmed from aging out of foster care into a world she wasn’t ready to navigate all alone. She agreed to an interview, first by phone, and the next day in person, with a loud “Absolutely!”

    Open and chatty, the 44-year-old mother who has kids who live elsewhere, and who is helping raise her niece, said she’s experienced homelessness on and off throughout her life, most recently after an eviction from an apartment that happened the same month she was in a car wreck, she said. She wound up in a secure outside tent community run by a non-profit and was able to take some classes at MSU Denver.  

    She said that she was put into foster care after calling the police on her abusive mother as a child. One placement involved her living in a basement under the stairs with another girl in foster care. She was a regular runaway for whom fending for herself with no support resulted in her not always being able to find or afford housing. 

    She’d come across Colorado Village Collaborative, which had a safe outdoor space set up on Elati Street in Denver. She spent six or seven months in a tent there, on a raised foundation that had an AC inside. 

    One day, the staff announced the research study and asked who wanted in: “They did a lottery thing and they got everybody who wanted to put their names in for it. You just go to the case manager; they put your information in; and then I don’t know how they pick people. … I didn’t know that they were doing all that, but well, if they’re going to give me money, I’m going to tell you I needed it.” 

    She was in the group that received an initial payment of $6,500, then $500 a month during the first year. In the second year, she got $1,000 every month without the balloon payment at the start. “I was excited. I was happy,” she said.

    She got into the study and moved into her apartment at about the same time, in November 2022. With the help of the Collaborative, she’d gotten approved for Section 8 housing, so she didn’t need to spend any of that money on a down payment or rent for the 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom unit in a hardscrabble Southeast Denver apartment complex on the fourth floor. “It was a coincidence. It was just like God planned; God put it all together. It was great,” she said.

    Like Ambrose, she said the relief from the stress of day-to-day things had a big impact on her. “They helped me to be stable and to pay my bills and to get on my feet and to be able to buy what I needed, and I wasn’t stressed out. I wasn’t worried … it gave me a good foundation to build on,” she said. 

    Palafox arranged a visit to her home on a recent summer afternoon when she wasn’t working a temp job. She stopped watching a TV show about electric vehicles to tour a reporter around, pointing out her niece Lily Little Thunder’s pink bedroom, as well as her own large bedroom, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room, where she had her Bible open near a large-screen TV. She spent money from the study to furnish the apartment with a living room set and everything else from a discount chain, she said. Little Thunder moved in with her aunt so she could have more space than at Palafox’s brother’s place – with her, she could have her own bedroom and a little dog. 

    Section 8 covers the rent, but not the bills, which is where the monthly payments have come in handy. When the money hits her debit card at mid-month, she says, “I’d just hold onto it to just pay the bills, pay whatever comes up, whatever I need for my apartment.” Utilities run her about $500 a month. 

    Employment hasn’t yet become steady. Because she cares for Little Thunder, 9, it’s a challenge to find a job that she can fit in while also taking care of her, but she has that figured out, too. “I got a bunch of temp jobs and I’ll call everybody and find out who has work and I’ll go to work for them.” 

    She shops for food with food stamps at Sam’s Club and doesn’t socialize much, instead, she keeps an eye on her niece, who likes soccer, gymnastics and basketball. Other nieces and nephews have visited regularly. Lily demonstrated a few cartwheels, back-bends and walk-overs. “She does that all day,” Palafox said with a smile.

    When told that the group she was in – recipients of the biggest amount – were doing about as well as the people who were in the control group and mid-range group, she initially said, “That’s crazy! I can’t believe it!” 

    Her thinking was that those in her group would be faring the best and that those in the control group wouldn’t see much of an impact on their lives – how far would they stretch $50 a month?

    Then she thought it over for a minute and realized that, based on what she’d learned about homeless people, the research findings made nothing but sense: The basic income project gave her and others a chance for a solution to their experience of homeless that, had they not been given it, they would have fought to figure out some other way. 

    “Yeah, I would’ve still worked at it. I wouldn’t have given up on my life.” She said that people seeking services from shelters or other community-based organizations have the motivation to improve their circumstances, unlike members of the unhoused population who – based on her own observations – often don’t. 

    Mark Gaskin

    Mark Gaskin became a part of the middle group of the study nearly two years ago, getting $1,000 a month, an amount that could end in October. It could last longer, depending on whether the study leaders are able to get the funds needed to extend it. He’d been living in his car when he heard about the program. Now, he’s living in a trailer/tent combination hitched to the car, which is usually parked on a quiet street adjacent to Rocky Mountain Lake Park. 

    The 61-year-old Gaskin said he was feeling anxious about the funding ending, and he wasn’t sure what his next step would be. “That’s a concern of mine because the reality is, I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m going to be able to pay whatever I have to pay for,” he said.

    He said he grew up in a big family. After he spent nearly three decades incarcerated, some time locked up in Arizona, he moved in with a nephew in Colorado in 2018. When the nephew got married, Gaskin felt like a third wheel and moved out. He found a job earning $24 an hour as a Traffic Control Supervisor and was living in a cozy two-bedroom house in Commerce City, paying about $1,000 a month. 

    Things were going well for the tall, slender Gaskin – until he was in a work-related car accident. His job fought him on the workmen’s compensation claim and he lost his job. The $20,000 payout he later got didn’t help in the short term: he fell behind on his rent and was evicted. His criminal background proved an obstacle to staying with family members and has upended his efforts to find a new job. 

    He was taken out of a bus driving training program when his background check hit a snag. And he’s been left with injuries from the accident that keep him from being comfortable standing up or sitting down for too long, he said. 

    On top of that, he has an obligation to his aunt. He’s the caretaker of his mother’s 81-year-old sister, who lives in an apartment around the corner from the park. “And so with the bad background and the litigation, it’s been next to impossible for a company to hire me,” he said. “And that keeps me where I’m at now. . . . it’s hard for me to get a job that’s going to allow me to take care of her and make sure she makes it to her appointments.”

    Like Ambrose, he said the emotional support kept him from the brink of losing all hope, and his outlook improved when he got into the research program. 

    “My stress of not being able to make my car payment was gone,” he said. He also connected with new friends through the program. “The finances was a great start, but for me it has blossomed into being able to talk to people again, to trust people again … ”

    During a recent visit to a grassy knoll where he often sets up a folding chair at the edge of the park within a stone’s throw from his car, he showed how he had managed to upgrade his life with the help of the $1,000 a month the study gives him. 

    He used a portion of his first payment to buy a rugged beige tent that he equipped with an air mattress and solar panels. Online, he found someone with a trailer to give away – he used $100 in study funds for registration. It has cabinet space where he stores canned goods, a small stove, a camping toilet and equipment to make a fire. The tent goes on top. 

    Pointing to a storage cubby in the trailer, he said: “I keep a lot of that stuff up there as well as I do use underneath here for my storage … I do have extra blankets and stuff like that. I know it gets cold in Colorado, so I want to be prepared.”

    He’s been learning ways to stretch out the $57 a month he gets in food stamps. “I’ve learned to survive on less – as far as less food,” he said. “I’ll buy ground beef and I’ll make myself some burritos that I can actually eat for a couple days. I buy ramen noodles, things that I know that will sustain me, and [I’m] learning not to be as big of an eater as I used to be.” 

    He said when the last check comes, he just has to keep on going and will try to figure it out. “Survive the best way I know how,” he said. 

    Like Palofax and Ambrose, he said that the money was a balm to the stress of homelessness, not the answer that could solve all of his problems. When asked whether he thought those in the $50 a month control group were as likely as he was to find housing – a question that the Denver Basic Income Project also probed – he said it depends on what the individual does with the money they receive, not how much.

    “It’s based on the mindset,” he said. “It’s not how little I’m getting, but what I do with what I have.” 

    Hunter Ambrose would agree – it’s all about motivation. “I believe it is the individuals,” she said. “All those things that I was doing? Those were things that I wanted, before Denver Basic Income Project. Like, how I wanted a better life for myself … so who I was was already there.”  

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • 75 artists received $9,000 each in a basic income trial. The cash helped a yarn guru to buy a house and a new car.

    By Theron Mohamed

    See original post here.

    Torri Hanna has juggled family and business obligations, replaced her damaged car, covered her credit cards and heating bills, saved up for a down payment, and purchased a new home. She couldn’t have done it without her guaranteed basic income.

    Hanna is a fiber artist who owns a yarn store/art studio in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. She’s one of 75 artists in two neighborhoods of St. Paul and rural Otter Tail County to receive $500 a month for 18 months — a total of $9,000 — with no strings attached as part of a basic-income pilot.

    The program, Guaranteed Income for Artists, was developed by Springboard for the Arts, an independent nonprofit. Participants were picked randomly from a pool of “artists, culture bearers, and creative workers” who received financial aid during the pandemic, when the virus forced businesses to close and gigs and exhibitions to be cancelled.

    Governments and charities in dozens of countries have rolled out similar initiatives in recent years, as evidence mounts that direct-cash payments can help alleviate poverty, improve health, and generate other benefits.

    Hanna’s business, Tangles to Treasures, only survived the pandemic with the support of federal loans and relief grants, she told Business Insider.

    Her daughter also moved into Hanna’s one-bedroom apartment above her store when the virus shut down college dorms, and finished her degree remotely in 2021.

    The avid weaver and embroiderer began taking Social Security payments at age 62 in 2022 but has struggled to make ends meet, with sales at her stores still below pandemic levels.

    Hanna said the $500 in guaranteed monthly income (GMI) from the artist program, which she began receiving in March 2023, has acted as a safety net during a tough period.

    The first few payments went toward covering her credit cards and raising her credit score. She used later ones to help save a down payment, which she and her daughter used to buy a house together two months ago.

    Hanna said the certainty of the sum hitting her account each month meant she could better plan her household finances. Her Social Security payments and her daughter’s salary covered most of their expenses, meaning she could keep the $500 for unexpected costs such as car or home repairs.

    ‘Financial head above water’

    It helped her navigate an eight-month period when she was providing round-the-clock care to her elderly mother after she had to leave her nursing home. Specifically, she felt comfortable temporarily closing her business and moving into a smaller space.

    Hanna also had to replace her vehicle after a “run-in with a deer” last month. “Other challenges have been made less daunting knowing that I have a little extra cushion.”

    Eventually, her mother secured a spot in a family-style care facility, which allowed Hanna to return home and reopen her business full-time. She’s now using the extra monthly cash to bolster her store’s inventory, cover her larger car loan, and keep up with mortgage payments.

    “This money has provided me with a consistent source of income that has been invaluable to keeping my financial head above water,” she told BI.

    “Buying a house would have been a struggle,” she continued. “I would be much deeper in credit-card debt. My credit score would be lower, and I probably would have bought a much older and less reliable used car than the 2013 SUV I recently purchased.”

    “There have been times in the last few months when having that money made paying the winter utility bills possible,” Hanna noted.

    “I don’t worry about skimping on our grocery purchases. Occasionally, we even treat ourselves to a meal out. Mostly, receiving the GMI support has provided stability when life throws me a curve.”

    Smart spending

    Early results from the pilot, which builds on a citywide program in St Paul, show that recipients spent 36% of their monthly payment on essential retail purchases and maintenance, repair, and professional services.

    They deployed another 30% on food and groceries, 10% on housing and utilities, 7% on transport, and 4% on healthcare and medical expenses. That may help refute a common criticism of basic-income schemes: that participants squander the money on luxuries or vices.

    Researchers found the program supported financial stability, long-term planning, resilience, and inclusion in the notoriously exclusive art world — paving the way for local artists to continue living in their neighborhoods and working within their communities.

    For example, another Fergus Falls artist, Jess Torgerson, told BI the monthly cash allowed her to quit a full-time job with unpredictable hours and frequent overtime, and instead focus on her personal artwork and her career as a freelance administrator and curator.

    “I realized that the $500 gave me that little extra cushion that I needed,” she said.

    ‘Food in my cupboards’

    Torgerson said she’d created enough work over the past year or so to stage her own exhibition, curated five exhibitions, and helped organize a summit of more than 100 rural artists from around the country.

    “I reserve the GMI for my groceries,” she said. “Pay for freelance work can sometimes be unpredictable. With the security of GMI, I know that I am guaranteed to have food in my cupboards.”

    Similarly, Kandace Creel Falcón — a scholar, writer, and visual artist — told BI the regular lump sum gave them financial freedom and funded their work as a full-time artist.

    Falcón, who lives with their wife and a bunch of animals including dogs, cats, goats, and chickens, said the money “helps us to tend to our herd.” They added that it felt like society saying “we’ve got your back” to rural artists.

    The $500 a month has spared another artist from having to move out of their neighborhood after their rent was raised three times in the past year, per an impact report from Springboard, the pilot’s developer.

    Meanwhile, another recipient, who’s a hip-hop artist, used the cash to buy back DJ equipment he’d sold to cover rent, per the report. He now spends the money to maintain the SUV he uses to transport his equipment, and to buy groceries.

    “I’ve literally been using it to restart, or kick-start, my career from a bit of a dead zone,” he said.

    The report’s big takeaway is that a guaranteed basic monthly income freed artists to take risks, back themselves by renting studio space or updating equipment, and have creative freedom over their work instead of answering to funders.

    “We recognize the critical role artists play in our communities, yet they often navigate precarious conditions, straddling the line between gig workers and small business owners, making them susceptible to falling through the cracks of social safety net programs.” Ricardo Beaird, Springboard’s community development director, told BI.

    Beaird added that the pilot was “about more than financial support — it’s about demonstrating the power of direct cash in pursuit of state and federal intervention and giving people the freedom to make the best decisions for themselves and their families.”

    The artist program is poised to expand on September 16 with a fresh cohort of rural artists for the next five years. Administrators have also partnered with a social services organization to give participants access to counseling on finance, student debt, housing, and other needs.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Meet the new moms using up to $700 in monthly basic income to afford childcare. It could be the answer to helping parents stay employed.

    By Allie Kelly

    See original post here.

    Celeste Lord-Timlin just had her first baby. Siobhan is about a month old, and it’s a victory when she naps just long enough for Lord-Timlin to rest or take a phone call. Meals or a shower sometimes have to wait until her husband returns from work and can hold the rosy-cheeked newborn.

    The 31-year-old and her husband love being parents. She said motherhood can feel “selfless,” but it brings her so much joy to have Siobhan sleep on her lap in their Flint, Michigan home.

    “I am so thankful that I get to be her mom,” she told Business Insider.

    Still, children are expensive. Lord-Timlin was thrilled to find out she was pregnant, but she and her husband have been worried about paying for diapers, nursery essentials, pediatrician visits, a car, and grocery trips. And when Lord-Timlin returns from maternity leave to her full-time job in the public service field, the couple knows they will have to pay thousands of dollars a month in day care fees. It felt overwhelming.

    Then Lord-Timlin enrolled in RxKids. The guaranteed basic income pilot is offering Flint-based mothers who had or will have children this year $1,500 during pregnancy and $500 a month through their baby’s first birthday, no strings attached.

    So far, the pilot has over 900 participating families. They were not required to meet any household income requirements, which are typical criteria for basic income programs. RxKids is partially financed from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) fund and has already provided a total of $2 million to new parents. It’s expected run through at least 2026, and program leaders hope to extend funding for as long as possible.

    The US has launched over 100 guaranteed basic income pilots — and RxKids joins a growing number focused on families. The cash payment model is an increasingly popular approach to poverty reduction in cities like Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Pilots offer participants, who are often low-income individuals, recurring cash payments for a set period of time to spend as they choose.

    As these pilots publish results — which include anecdotes from participant interviews, job outcomes, and spending data — there’s a trend emerging: Parents are using their monthly payments to afford the soaring cost of childcare. And, with stable childcare, parents like Lord-Timlin can have stronger job security and financial freedom.

    Shafeka Hashash is the associate director of guaranteed income at the Economic Security Project, an advocacy nonprofit. She told BI that guaranteed basic income lets parents choose a childcare and employment situation that works best for their families.

    “Not only are they having a more stable source of employment, they’re able to spend more time with their kids,” she said.

    The cash has already allowed Lord-Timlin to buy a stroller so she can take Siobhan on walks through their neighborhood. It’s also helping her pay for dual master’s degrees — tuition is costly, and Lord-Timlin lost her FAFSA benefits because she had to switch to part-time enrollment during her pregnancy. She said GBI gave her the flexibility she needed to stay in school. She’s expected to graduate next May.

    Parents use guaranteed basic income to pay for childcare, improve job outcomes

    Nearly one in four parents report being fired from their jobs due to lack of steady childcare, according to a survey of 806 working parents across the US by ReadyNation Council for a Strong America, a bipartisan nonprofit, that was published in 2023. The vast majority of the parents surveyed said childcare challenges hurt their time and productivity at work — leading to lower earnings and forgone promotions.

    Meanwhile, it will cost parents about $26,000 this year to raise one small child in America, about $12,900 of which often goes to paying for childcare. But 13% of American households live at or below the federal poverty line, which is $25,820 annually for a family of three, according to the nonprofit United Way. And around 29% of American households live paycheck to paycheck.

    Shamarra Woods, 31, is a single mother in Atlanta. When her daughter was a newborn, Woods was selected as a participant for in In Her Hands, a guaranteed basic income pilot for low-income Black women in Georgia. She had previously been struggling to get by and often had to choose between paying her electricity or rent.

    The pilot, run by the nonprofits Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund and GiveDirectly, gave 650 participants $20,400 over two years. Beginning in 2022, one group received $850 a month for 24 months, while Woods’ group received $4,300 during the first month of the program, then $700 a month for the following 23 months. Payments concluded in spring 2024.

    Woods said she spent the first $4,300 to pay outstanding bills, then bought the formula, diapers, and clothing she needed for her newborn baby. And, as her daughter grew into a toddler, Woods directed the money toward day care. The average childcare cost in Atlanta is $20 an hour — which amounts to over $3,000 a month if a parent works full-time.

    Woods recently earned a promotion and raise at her management job, an accomplishment she credits to being able to afford steady, predictable childcare. She feels some anxiety about continuing to pay bills now that her GBI payments have ended, but the promotion makes her feel prepared to support her daughter.

    “I really wanted that for my daughter,” Woods previously told BI. “I wanted to build a really good foundation — put her in good schools and really invest in her education. I still want that.”

    GBI joins other safety nets for families — but critics worry cash payments aren’t sustainable

    To be sure, there are still questions about the continued feasibility of guaranteed basic income. More research is needed to determine how GBI impacts participants in the long run, as most pilots only study short-term financial and job outcomes along with participants’ self-reported spending data.

    GBI continues to face political and legal challenges throughout the US. Some lawmakers worry that the millions of dollars it costs to run each pilot isn’t sustainable for city, federal, or private funders. Others say that cash payments discourage work.

    It’s also true that not all families struggle to afford stable childcare. Care costs are often at their highest when a child is an infant, but nearly 30% of parents say the expense becomes manageable once their child is old enough to attend school, per the financial research firm Nerdwallet. In the same survey — which polled 2,000 US adults in December 2023 — one in five parents with children under the age of 18 said the cost of childcare is their biggest financial stressor. The other 80% of parents cited other expenses, like housing.

    Hashash said that guaranteed basic income can help parents cover these childcare costs and build a career with predictable hours. With cash payments, she said many parents can switch to working one stable job, instead of having to cobble together a living wage with three low-paying gigs. It can also give families the resources they need to pursue higher education — and, in turn, potentially land higher-paying roles.

    “The ability for families to spend that time with their kids: It’s not always the most easy thing to quantify in a data point,” Hashash said. “That’s why it’s so important to hear folks stories, and that’s what we hear every single time.”

    The GBI model joins other social safety nets for low-income families like the child tax credit and federal programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and TANF, she added.

    As for Lord-Timlin, she’s expected to return to work soon. She plans to use her guaranteed basic income to afford childcare for Siobhan, who she wants to raise to be “generous” and “think beyond herself,” she said.

    “Anyone who’s had a child knows that this is not like a luxury income,” Lord-Timlin said, referring to the cash payments from RxKids. “This is just assisting us in our time of need.”

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • In experiments, San Diego researchers gave cash to low-income people. Here’s what they learned.

    By Roxana Popescu

    See original post here.

    Government aid to households traditionally comes with restrictions. You can load your shopping basket with potatoes, but not Popsicles. Certain grants are for prescription medication co-pays, not a dental cleaning.

    A shift in thinking about aid among some policymakers and nonprofits has led to the creation of pilot programs across the U.S. where households get cash, with no strings attached, so they can spend it as they see fit.

    San Diego County is at the forefront of these initiatives.

    A local nonprofit, Jewish Family Service of San Diego, has been testing versions of this approach in four programs. Two gave different amounts of money to different groups of low-income San Diegans — some who were raising families and others who were at risk for homelessness. One program, still ongoing, targets families at risk for foster care intervention. A fourth, in the planning stage, will work with Black women who have goals of entrepreneurship.

    The programs, paid for in large part with county, state or federal funds, have so far served more than 2,800 households in San Diego County and have made cash payments totaling more than $11.7 million.

    All ask a similar question: Can cash grants, or grants in combination with mentorship and coaching, help boost the economic welfare of low-income people more efficiently and effectively than other kinds of aid?

    A new report about the programs, released by Jewish Family Service this week, makes a case that “unrestricted cash support acts as a systemic buffer, provides economic security during economic downturns, helps families weather financial emergencies, and enables them to plan for the future.”

    Cash payments can also be a catalyst for upward economic mobility, the report says: “For many, having enough cash is the difference between following through with that new business idea, booking that dental appointment, enrolling in a college course part-time, or paying their monthly rent.”

    The report also shares some preliminary results. Researchers found that low-income families and individuals who got support in the form of cash used that money to pay for essential needs — food, housing, retail goods and transportation, said Khea Pollard, the director for economic mobility and opportunity at Jewish Family Service of San Diego.

    While one grant program is still under way and the long-term outcomes are still unknown for two others that concluded, these early results show people used their cash grants to help their families — not for frivolous purchases, Pollard said.

    “It’s debunking a lot of the myths and the disbelief and really the hesitation around handing cash to families,” Pollard said.

    Kimberly Giardina, the director of the county’s Child and Family Well-Being Department with the county’s Health & Human Services Agency, pointed to new research about a Los Angeles guaranteed income pilot. Its participants were more able to cover a $400 emergency, compared to the control group, and they were more able to afford the food they needed.

    California’s Department of Social Services has seven guaranteed income pilot programs, and one more in the works that will focus on seniors, she added.

    “I think there’s a lot to be learned about how we can use cash assistance programs to really mitigate some of the impacts of poverty,” Giardina said.

    Can an income boost keep at-risk families together?

    The programs operated by Jewish Family Service test different hypotheses around cash payments.

    The Family Income for Empowerment Program, now enrolling participants, targets families who are at risk for interacting with the foster system. It is part of a randomized, controlled trial with the County of San Diego and Casey Family Programs, a foster care service.

    Through this pilot, the county hopes to find out if the cash payments are “really successful in reducing the number of families who become involved in the foster care system, because we’re able to mitigate a lot of those factors that are associated with neglect, through cash assistance,” Giardina said. Another question is whether this program — an up-front investment in the finances of vulnerable families — is more cost effective compared to foster care and other safety net programs, she added.

    To find out if an unrestricted cash boost makes a difference, more than 400 families will receive $500 a month for 24 months. Participants must be referred by the County’s Child Family and Well-Being Department, earn 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level or less, have at least one child living with them and be local. Because of their income level, families in this program and the others are already likely to be receiving government subsidies.

    While guaranteed income has been studied extensively, a lot less work has been done on the link between such support and reduced interaction with the foster system, Giardina said.

    “Addressing it this way is really new. As far as we know, we’re only the second program like this in the country,” Giardina said. The other is in Chicago, she added.

    The study period is not finished, so it is too soon to know if it helped prevent intervention by Child Welfare Services.

    One early result, though, is that people spent grant funds on retail, services, food and groceries. This is meaningful, Pollard said, because two-thirds of participants had reported in a baseline survey that they skipped meals before receiving these cash payments. Not having enough food can be a trigger for an investigation for neglect.

    “People can get referred for a whole host of reasons – for not having food in their house, not being able to feed their child, maybe their kids coming to school hungry,” Pollard said.

    Can money plus curated services help build wealth?

    The Black Women’s Resilience Project plans to pair two kinds of support: $1,000 monthly payments for 18 months, plus suppport for professional and personal development in the form of “mentorship, coaching, and social enterprise opportunities that help build economic mobility and generate wealth.”

    That support will come in four areas: finance, health, community-building and civic engagement.

    In the finance category, participants will be mentored in entrepreneurship, finance, and career skills. In health, they will have access to culturally competent health care — an example being doulas who understand how the potential for racial bias can lead to tragic outcomes for Black women during labor and birth.

    “We expect to see increased food and housing security, improved health outcomes” and career growth that will lead to higher income, the report says.

    How does cash aid help when there are no strings attached?

    Two programs that have concluded gave cash to households using different models — one as a steady flow of $500 a month over two years, and the other as a lump sum of $4,000.

    In the second, program, Recovery Action Fund for Tomorrow Program (RAFT), four out of five recipients were families with children, and roughly one-fifth were older adults. More than one-fifth were identified as being at risk for homelessness.

    Most of the money in that program went toward housing, the report found.

    Pollard said people used the money to quickly solve problems that would have otherwise been devastating — like losing housing because they were behind on rent.

    “There are people who were in precarious, unstable housing situations, were at risk of losing housing, and they chose to spend this money on rent,” she said. “A large portion of that $4,000 was spent on the rent that they needed to catch up on, and they were able to make that decision.”

    The other program, San Diego for Every Child, gave money to families in low-income ZIP codes. Food, groceries, retail goods and services were the top spending categories. Likewise, in RAFT, people most often spent their money on food, even though housing was the largest expense by amount.

    This points to a larger concern, Pollard said, because programs already exist to provide food aid to low-income people.

    The report echoed that: “57% of RAFT participants responded they ate less than they felt they should because there wasn’t enough money for food, despite 66% of participants reporting they received CalFresh/SNAP benefits.”

    The fact that people who were enrolled in CalFresh still used the cash to pay for food shows that people need food beyond what they can access with current aid programs, Pollard said. CalFresh is California’s public food aid program for low-income people

    “They’re accessing the resources everyone tells them to access,” she said. “… I think we need to start with that baseline and say, OK, so people on our program are buying more food, and they’re already on CalFresh. There’s a gap there that still needs to be met. And the need for flexible cash to do that is also a supplement to that social safety net. We want to strengthen the social safety net, we don’t want to dismantle it.”

    A county spokesperson noted that CalFresh is meant to be supplemental. That is baked into the name at the federal level: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

    “CalFresh is an important supplemental food program, but not one designed to cover all of a person’s or family’s nutrition needs,” he said.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Child Tax Credit expansion boosted housing affordability and stability, study shows

    By Jeff Karoub

    See original post here.

    A temporary, pandemic-era expansion of the Child Tax Credit improved housing affordability for families with low incomes, according to University of Michigan research.

    The study by Natasha Pilkauskas and Katherine Michelmore, associate professors of public policy, and Nicole Kovski, a former U-M postdoctoral fellow now at the University of Wisconsin, found that parents who got the monthly credit were less likely to owe past-due rent or mortgage payments and they were less likely to need to move because they couldn’t afford their housing. It also allowed parents to gain residential independence from partners they were living with and reduce the number of people residing in their household, likely decreasing household crowding.

    The researchers say their study focused on families most likely affected by the reforms—those with very low incomes and of particular interest to policymakers. No prior studies estimated the effects of the Child Tax Credit on living arrangements, despite research demonstrating how economic need and housing affordability can shape them.

    In March 2021, Congress passed the temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit to deal with the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on families with children. The benefit was increased from $2,000 to $3,600 per child under age 6 and to $3,000 per child aged 6–17, and eligibility was extended to families with no earnings. Half the credit was disbursed as a monthly payment from July to December 2021.

    These reforms resulted in roughly 26 million children gaining credit eligibility or receiving higher benefits, nearly all of whom lived in low-income households.

    However, lawmakers failed to garner enough support to make the changes permanent. By January 2022, the credit returned to its pre-2021 version, which had restrictions that meant that more than one quarter of the poorest children in the U.S. were ineligible for the full credit.

    Analyzing national data from a sample of parents who received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, the researchers found larger effects of the monthly credit on housing affordability for lower earners than for higher earners. Further analyses by race and ethnicity showed the credit improved housing affordability more for Black and Hispanic households than for their white counterparts.

    “Our findings suggest the monthly child tax credit helped low-income parents afford their housing,” Pilkauskas said. “We know that stable housing is very important for children, and the evidence from our research suggests the credit helped families pay their rent and stay in their homes.”

    Michelmore said they thought the credit might reduce doubling up—where a child lives with other adults beyond their parents or parent’s partner—but they found no evidence of that. Rather, she added, parents were less likely to live with a co-resident partner.

    “We think this happens when couples break up but stay in the home for financial reasons,” she said. “Once parents got the credit, they could afford to live independently.”

    The researchers caution there were some factors limiting them from drawing firm, absolute conclusions from their work. Among them: The monthly child tax credit was provided for only six months, families who thought the benefit was temporary might have been less likely to adjust their living arrangements, and the credit was distributed during a time of high inflation—challenges that likely mean the effects of the credit were underestimated.

    Also, the expanded credit was distributed during a pandemic and shortly after the government implemented other forms of stimulus. These issues make it more difficult to generalize results.

    Michelmore said the findings of their research could be useful for policymakers in the months ahead. Expansions to the Child Tax Credit implemented in 2018 will expire in 2025, so there will be conversations about how to reform the credit.

    The study was published in the journal Demography.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Baltimore, other cities try to answer: Can a handout ease the burden of poverty, and for how long?

    By Jean Marbella

    See original post here.

    The money allowed one mother in California to say “yes” instead of her usual “no” when her child asked for ice cream. In New York, it gave a minimum-wage worker the freedom to quit and focus on nursing school.

    For others, it covered the unexpected car repair or sudden medical expense that instead might have cascaded into losing a job or falling behind on the rent.

    Across the country, an experiment has been underway to answer the question: Can a regular, no-strings-attached infusion of cash help alleviate, if not poverty itself, then some of its grinding effects?

    Baltimore is among dozens of cities that have launched a program known as guaranteed or basic income, a direct handout, usually of $500 or $1,000 a month via a reloadable debit card, to a select group of residents, while researchers study how they spend it and the effect it has on the quality of their lives.

    Spearheaded by Mayor Brandon Scott, Baltimore’s pilot, funded with $4.8 million from the city’s share of federal American Rescue Plan Act money, paid 200 parents $1,000 a month for a two-year period that ended last month. Preliminary results show that participants’ income, housing independence and mental health all improved in the program’s first year.

    The number of participants who reported applying to a college or trade school increased from 16% to 27% during the first year, according to a study produced by Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a group of mayors advocating for such programs. The percentage of recipients renting as opposed to living with friends or family jumped from 52% to 67% over the same span.

    The concept of a guaranteed income has gained more interest and support in recent years but also some backlash, with supporters saying recipients use the money on necessities like food and rent, and opponents decrying it as yet another government handout for the poor.

    “It used to be the case that I would frequently be asked, ‘Aren’t they going to spend it on drugs and alcohol? Aren’t they going to work less?’” said Stacia West, a founding director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania.

    With a growing body of research that disabuses the notion that the guaranteed income encourages frivolous spending or laziness, West said she is more likely to be queried on how a guaranteed income program can be implemented.

    The money can provide a cushion for those who live on the finance edge and comes without the kind of regulations and limitations of more conventional public assistance like food stamps or housing vouchers, researchers say.

    What the guaranteed money buys in many cases was time, West said.

    “When you’re very low-income, that translates into time scarcity,” West said. “You’re spending all this time navigating these systems — child care, transportation. Guaranteed income unlocks some time for you.”

    Some used the time for job training that led to better work, researchers have found across the country, or to spend more time with children, leading to improved school performance.

    In Baltimore’s pilot, preliminary results showed participants’ labor force participation increased from 64% to 71%, though their unemployment rate remained more than twice that of average Baltimore residents.

    With many of the programs still fairly new, it remains to be seen how long their positive effects on recipients last, researchers said. Many of the pilot plans including Baltimore’s used federal pandemic relief funds that are expiring, leaving them without a readily available source of support.

    West said guaranteed income is “an imprecise tool” and can’t by itself fix the underlying causes of systemic poverty, such as the legacy of “racial redlining and neighborhood segregation” that Scott has pointed to in making his case for the program.

    “What is very clear is the history of redlining isn’t going to be solved by guaranteed income,” West said.

    Particularly in red states, there are those with “a potent ideological objection” to giving free money to the poor, said Matthew Reed, executive director of the Harkin Institute for Public Policy and Citizen Engagement in Iowa.

    This spring, the institute was about halfway through a two-year pilot program that gives $500 a month to 110 people in the Des Moines area when the Iowa Legislature banned the use of public funds in such programs.

    About half of the Iowa program’s $2.5 million costs come from public sources, including municipalities in its three-county area, so those funds are being spent first, saving private money for after the new law takes effect next year, Reed said.

    “It was certainly frustrating,” Reed said.

    Rather than waiting until the project’s conclusion to have “a more honest debate” about its merits, Reed said, legislators opted to say, “We don’t care what the results are. We don’t like it.”

    Legislators split largely on partisan lines. One Republican lawmaker called it “socialism on steroids,” while Democrats argued that local governments should be allowed to use their funds as they saw fit.

    Iowa State Sen. Scott Webster, a Republican, who shepherded the bill through his chamber, called guaranteed income “a terrible waste of taxpayer money.” He disputed research that supports the program’s benefits, saying it doesn’t adequately track how recipients spend the money on the debit card as well as other funds at their disposal.

    “Let’s say they use $500 [of program money] on groceries. What happened to the money they used to use for groceries. Where’d that go?” Webster said.

    Such sentiments reflect an unfair distrust and scrutiny of poor people, said Abigail Marquez, who oversaw the guaranteed income program in Los Angeles.

    The city’s pilot was the nation’s largest, a $38 million effort that served more than 3,000 residents.

    “Based on the results from the research, we learned that people were able to seek and obtain dignified work,” said Marquez, who manages the city’s Community Investment for Families Department.

    Another important outcome was the time freed up for recipients to spend with children and neighbors, and on their own health and well-being.

    “We saw that participants were able to leave a violent home environment because of the guaranteed income,” she said.

    The concept has found a friendly home in deeply blue California, which has multiple programs designed to help groups that include immigrants and those exiting foster care. Legislatures in other states have, like Iowa, blocked them, although two Democratic governors, in Arizona and Wisconsin, have vetoed the measures.

    The Texas Attorney General sued Harris County, which includes Houston, saying its guaranteed income program violated the state constitution’s ban against giving public money to an individual. The state’s Supreme Court has temporarily blocked the program, and county officials are considering adjustments to try getting around that.

    To turn guaranteed income pilots into more permanent parts of the social safety net will require funding, of course, but also political will, supporters said.

    “If it’s a public program, it needs political support,” Reed said. “To do it at a larger scale, it’s going to require public money and public buy-in.”

    The first mayor-led guaranteed income pilot similar to Baltimore’s launched in 2019 in Stockton, California. Other cities followed, and researchers have found across the board that recipients use the money in ways that make sense for their families, spending it on rent, utilities and food, said Suki Samra, who directed the Stockton program and now is executive director of the mayors’ group advocating for guaranteed income.

    Participants are consistently more likely to find long-term employment, she said, and to get some form of education when compared to a control group.

    “When you remove that constant drumbeat of anxiety, of worry, folks are able to take a step back, they’re able to dream,” Samra said. “They’re able to think about what their full potential is.”

    Although Baltimore stopped distributing benefits at the end of July, the study of its recipients continues. Researchers are expected to release next year a final study of the program, which will include data on recipients collected up to six months after the close of the program.

    Then what? Scott is among those who would like to see the concept implemented on a more comprehensive, national basis.

    When the city’s preliminary results were rolled out in June, Scott directly addressed federal lawmakers.

    “This should be a national thing,” he said in a news conference. “It can be and should be and it will be — I’m going to speak it into existence — part of the solution to end poverty for good in this country.”

    Samra said the mayors’ group believes an expansion of the child tax credit to include cash payments to parents would be a natural progression.

    “We’re seeing that as the most politically feasible tool,” she said.

    West said people have grown increasingly comfortable with the idea of a guaranteed income. Andrew Yang made it part of his run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. And during the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government sent stimulus money to more than 150 million households.

    “We all received a guaranteed income then,” she said.

    She envisions cities continuing to serve as “incubators of invention,” experimenting with how to build on guaranteed income pilots and work towards a goal that should be beyond politics.

    “Poverty alleviation,” West said, “should be nonpartisan.”

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.