By Monica Nickelsburg
See original post here.
Guaranteed basic income is an anti-poverty policy gaining traction in Washington cities. Tacoma recently started its second basic-income pilot, on the heels of a separate King County experiment.
KUOW’s economy podcast, “Booming,” sat down with Natalie Foster, the architect of more than 130 basic-income pilots across the United States to understand surprising findings from King County’s basic-income experiment, and what it means for the policy more broadly.
Stephanie Bartella felt like she couldn’t win.
She’d worked up the courage to leave what she described as an unsafe marriage with her four kids. Then she moved from Texas to Tacoma, Washington, to be closer to her parents. She earned her bachelor’s degree, got a job at Pierce College, and made a financial plan for her family. But after all of that, she still had to put the utility bill on her credit card.
“It felt really defeating,” she said.
Bartella was considering getting a second job when her luck turned around. She found out she was selected for Tacoma’s first guaranteed basic-income pilot. She would receive $500 a month for a year through Growing Resilience in Tacoma (GRIT).
“It felt like winning the lottery, really,” Bartella said.
Bartella and the rest of the first GRIT cohort received 13 monthly payments starting in December 2021. The program was designed to demonstrate the effect that small, temporary cash payments without strings attached can have on the financial stability of participants long-term. The Washington state Legislature funded a second version in Tacoma to expand the participant pool and study the feasibility of a basic-income program long-term. This month, GRIT 2.0 began sending out cash payments to the new cohort.
Bartella used the money to pay off overdue bills, get braces for her son, and remove a rotting tree that had been looming in her front yard. And she says that having the freedom to focus on the job she had helped her land a promotion.
“I was able to relax, look at what I already had, and see what were the opportunities around me,” she said.
Although she’s no longer receiving the payments, Bartella says basic income had a lasting impact on her financial health. Thanks to that promotion, she can afford her bills now.
Bartella’s experience is typical for participants in basic-income pilots. Although the findings from the first GRIT program won’t be published until this summer, an earlier pilot in nearby King County shows Bartella’s story isn’t unusual.
Participants in who received $500 a month through the King County pilot were much more likely to have a job by the end of it. Employment increased from 37% to 66%, and participants ended the program with higher wages and better benefits.
To understand why free money would make people more likely to work, the Boomingteam sat down with Natalie Foster, author of “The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy.” Listen now to hear Foster explain the surprising multiplier effect of no-strings-attached cash.
![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. Baltimore, other cities try to answer: Can a handout ease the burden of poverty, and for how long?](https://basicincometoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/breanna-klemm-1nVBujxVJXU-unsplash-225x300.jpg)
