Marin County supervisors have allocated $400,000 to participate in a universal basic income experiment with the Marin Community Foundation.
The foundation plans to spend $3 million to give $1,000 a month to 125 low-income women for 24 months. To qualify, the women must have a child under the age of 18.
“The ultimate endgame for this demonstration project is to have an example of how cash aid can be really helpful in terms of alleviating poverty, to test the usefulness of this approach to addressing poverty and addressing some of the racial inequities that we know exist in the county and beyond,” Johnathan Logan, a foundation vice president, told the Board of Supervisors before the unanimous vote on Tuesday.
To some degree, the project is modeled on the 24-month trial conducted in Stockton from February 2019 to February 2020. But unlike the Stockton program, the Marin initiative will be limited to non-White women.
Thomas Peters, the foundation’s chief executive, confirmed the restriction.
“This first cohort will focus on low-income moms of color,” he said in an email. “We’re starting with those moms with the greatest aggregate of challenges: low income, young children and facing the daily travails and insults of overt and covert racial discrimination.”
In addition to Logan, Barbara Clifton Zarate, the foundation’s director of economic opportunity, and Anyania Muse, Marin County’s equity officer, briefed the supervisors.
Zarate said participants in the foundation’s universal basic income trial will be elected at random from among 4,600 people who have already received direct cash aid from the foundation with the help of the Family Independence Initiative.
FII, an Oakland nonprofit, issues payments to recipients by directly depositing money into their bank accounts or issuing them a debit card or virtual card that can be used online. Since the onset of the pandemic, the foundation has used FII to distribute more than $1.2 million.
Announcing that program in August, Peters said the goal was to give $500 to 2,000 families, with priority for people who were ineligible to benefit from federal programs.
Oakland, which announced its own experiment with the universal basic income on Tuesday, will also be partnering with FII to give $500 a month to six hundred Oakland families for 18 months.
Related Story: Oakland launches guaranteed pay plan for low-income people of color
Zarate said to be eligible for the Marin Community Foundation program, participants would have to have earnings below the self-sufficiency standard for Marin County as calculated by the Insight Center for Economic Development, an Oakland nonprofit. For example, a household with two adults, one preschool child and one school-age child could earn up to $129,000 a year.
Zarate said the people eligible for the program all live in four areas of Marin: San Rafael’s predominantly Latino Canal neighborhood; Marin City, where the majority of Marin’s African American residents live; Novato; and West Marin.
Although he voted to approve the expenditure, Supervisor Damon Connolly expressed reservations about the eligibility requirements. He represents most of San Rafael but not the Canal neighborhood.
“When I hear the geographic specificity, I’m hearing my district, District 1, is not included,” Connolly said. “I know there are many single moms who would otherwise fit the criteria for the need and opportunity presented by this program.”
Another important difference between the Marin Community Foundation’s demonstration project and other universal basic income experiments is that it will offer additional “wrap-around” services to participants. Logan said such services might include job training and assistance in securing work that pays a living wage.
Logan said that before embarking on the project, the foundation interviewed more than 90 low-income Marin mothers.
“Many had two or three jobs in the county,” he said, “but they weren’t always in a position to make ends meet.”
Marin County’s $400,000 contribution to the program would be used to help pay for these services and also to cushion the blow should participants lose government assistance they are currently receiving due to their increased income.
Zarate said the foundation is attempting to get state welfare agencies to grant exceptions to participants in its program. She said Stockton was able to obtain a waiver from income requirements from CalWORKs, a public assistance program that provides cash aid and services to eligible families with a child.
The supervisors’ decision to spend $400,000 on the trial comes amid budget hearings and strategy discussions about growing deficits. Nevertheless, County Administrator Matthew Hymel voiced his support for the county’s participation in the project.
“We have a shared mission around addressing racial equity and reducing poverty,” Hymel said.
Public comment at Tuesday’s board meeting was mostly positive.
“This is a great start,” said Charlene Eldon, a Sausalito resident. “Black people in Marin City and the county at large are owed reparations.”
Muse, the county’s equity officer, noted that the City Council of Evanston, Illinois, voted on Tuesday to pay reparations of $25,000 per family to African Americans.
“What is happening really needs to be highlighted as a critical turning point,” Muse said. “It’s a start; it’s nowhere near where people need to be.”
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“The foundation plans to spend $3 million to give $1,000 a month to 125 low-income women for 24 months. To qualify, the women must have a child under the age of 18”. Don’t these single women all have kids under the age of 18???? Secondly, most of these women will just keep getting pregnant, with no fathers around. Being irresponsible from the time one is a teen and having babies that one cannot afford, leads to poverty and leads to not getting educated. The result, an endless cycle of poverty and crime.
SO not oly are they racist, but they are sexist…
PLUS DON’T they already get enough “Guaranteed income” via Wic, Welfare, EBT and all the other govt bennies??
OK… so if I quit my job… identify (transgender) as a woman…adopt a child that identifies as someone with a 10 year old mentality …. I’d qualify?
No you’d also need to identify as a black…
* To qualify, the women must have a child under the age of 18.
** the Marin initiative will be limited to non-White women.
#1. This is discrimination against White women.
#2. This is exactly the ways of Socialism.
#3. Do these idiots even know of all the free stuff negro women with illegitimate children get from the government?
There has been generations of these people who have never had a job in their life and receive free money, free housing, free food, free clothing, free medical and even free phones. They just live off of the taxpayer that does work.
2 Thessalonians 3:10
“The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
#4. Now puppet biden is importing unaccompanied minors and poor families into this country by the Millions.
Would you like to guess who will be providing them with free money, free housing, free food, free clothing, free medical??
You can bet your bippy that YOUR TAXES will go up.
Sounds like instutional racism to me. This must be what the Democrats mean by systemic RACISM.
My daughter stayed at Residence Inn Hotel ..she paid for 4 days ..upon visiting her there a vehicle pulled up driven by a black man…3 women got out and 6 children were with these women …the man left…these 9 people in one hotel room for 3 days…all went swimming in the pool…ate the breakfast everyday…trust me on this one…the American people paid for this …8 pizza boxes outside the door everyday…give them money they never will work a day in their lives…this welfare is handed down from generation to generation
Instead of rewarding bad behavior and life failure, these are the fools who should be taxed to the tune of their own screwups. Reward social failure and you will just get more of it, Punish failure and it begins to dissappear, Problem is when the failures collectively organize to overwhelm the sane, and the Democrat party gets voted into power, as America gets defunded in their stupidity and failed social experiments that have no basis on basoi human needs and behavior. Pavlovs salivating dogs would make better citizens than humans turned into trained seals by bottom feeding Democrats.
Institutional racism AND SEXISM..
BUT since the dems are the ones doing it.. It’s all “GOOD”…
Is “black face” still not an option? First the COVID bill has help for farmers, but only farmers of color, now it’s this abortion of a program. Is mandatory birth control part of the requirement? If not, why not?
If I was a bigot I’d ask how much of an excuse this would be to work less.
Just ask the welfare leeches, who’ve not worked for several generations, but STILL earn a good living, off of the govt teet.
looks to me that even if a white woman was in the same situation as a minority woman, the white woman is just out of luck. All whites should move out of that county and even the state if possible. Wonder how long this screw ball idea would work if all the whites, who just happen to pay the majority of taxes, moved away and the only people remaining are the minority welfare crowd who don’t pay any taxes. Where would the guaranteed income money come from?
The federal govt.. That’s where. VIA Taxing the rest of us
Enlighten me, why isn’t this racist? Would it be racist if only white people who qualify would get it? How about if only Asian? Or American Indian?
This violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution.
You should know by now, those ONLY apply to PoC, and ONLY when it benefits them and NOT whites.
“The ultimate endgame for this demonstration project is to have an example of how cash aid can be really helpful in terms of alleviating poverty, to test the usefulness of this approach to addressing poverty and addressing some of the racial inequities that we know exist in the county and beyond,”
What a load of horse manure!
SO FAR, from all i’ve read up on these programs, EVERYWHERE THEY HAVE BEEN TRIED< they were abject FAILURES..
Everywhere!!!!
Democrats are so flexible. Tax the producers to pay to kill the babies. Or pay minorities to breed with no nuclear family for stability or mentoring. They really ARE evil.
When they say black lives matter ,they mean only black lives matter to democrats. Biden is putting Minorities in courts as judges. Will black lives matter only apply to them too??? We must get out and vote . Remember, if you say ” all lives matter or white lives matter ,you’ll being racist.