Families in the city of Sacramento can now apply to be one of 80 households chosen for the second edition of a local guaranteed basic income program.
Chosen participants will receive monthly payments of $500, no strings attached, for 12 months starting in July 2023.
“We know that things are really, really expensive right now,” said Dawnté Early, president and CEO of United Way California Capital Region, which is administering the program. “The idea that we’re going to be able to help families who really need it right now — that’s really exciting.”
Guaranteed income’s no-strings-attached model presents an alternative to traditional social safety net programs, which typically place strict limits on how recipients can use the money. Policymakers are increasingly showing greater openness to direct cash assistance programs in the wake of the pandemic’s economic turmoil.
More California municipalities have embraced guaranteed income pilots in recent years, and the state launched its own $25.5 million pilot in late 2022.
Successful trials, such as Stockton’s Economic Empowerment Demonstration, have found that participants largely use the money to meet basic needs such as food, clothing and housing. Stockton participants also had higher employment rates, improved happiness levels and were better equipped to handle sudden emergency expenses, according to a post-trial study.
Critics of guaranteed basic income programs have generally argued they might sway people away from seeking work, similar to fears expressed about unemployment benefits.
Applications opened Wednesday for Sacramento’s program, which is funded through a combination of federal COVID-19 relief dollars and United Way’s private donors. The deadline to apply is the end of April 14 and applicants must live in the city of Sacramento and meet income requirements determined by household size. A single adult must earn less than $28,205 to qualify, for example, and a single parent with one child must earn less than $49,945.
United Way launched the first Sacramento basic income pilot in June 2021. As part of that trial, the nonprofit has given 100 low-income residents in the county $300 a month, and will continue to do so through June of this year.
Unlike the initial trial run, the second iteration of the program will last only 12 months rather than 24, but the monthly payments will rise to $500 from $300 based on feedback from the first cohort. In June 2022, the Sacramento City Council approved $750,000 in funding for the next installment of the program.
Researchers at Sacramento State will formally evaluate and analyze data from the second rendition of the program, an option for which funding wasn’t available the first time around.
“This round it was really, really important to set aside some dollars to be able to do the formal evaluation piece as well,” Early said. “When you’re wanting to truly see if something is working or not, that’s the way that you should do it.”
©2023 The Sacramento Bee. Visit sacbee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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This is just another step toward socialism. The intentional goal of the traitorous, destructive, dishonest, unethical, woke Democrats.
Give a man a fish – feed him for a day.
Teach a man how to fish – feed him for life.
The reason the taxes are so high in California is because they force the taxpayer to support 30% of their population.
Have you ever wondered why California has the highest homeless population? Because California gives away the most free stuff.
Liberal Democrats believe if you give a man a fish, you turn him into a worm, that will not only feed the social state, but attract more parasitical bloodsucking worms like themselves into government, educated in the schools of bottom feeding cannibal political pariah piranha fish that feed off their own and even eat their own young. Once the worm is turned, you will get his vote for life.
MAY they go belly up.. AND SOON!
Scruffy_USN_Retired on March 18, 2023…
”This is just another step toward socialism”
IN THE BOOK BY Mark Levin, ” AMERICAN MARXISM,” HE WROTE, It is well worth underscoring what Professor Joathan M. Weiner told the Sun Times: ” ‘ Marxism and Feminism, Marxism and deconstruction, Marxism and Race-this is where the exciting debates are.’ And Diversity is now the signature of once- monolithic Marxism.” Page #62.
Scruffy_USN_Retired on March 18, 2023
“…This is just another step toward socialism. The intentional goal of the traitorous, destructive, dishonest, unethical, woke Democrats.
“,,,Have you ever wondered why California has the highest homeless population? Because California gives away the most free stuff.”‘ Buy the votes,’ that’s what the democrat, Socialist,/ Communist party has been doing by providing ”Free Stuff,” to the minorities already on the welfare rolls,” FREDRIC BASTIST…did most of his writing during the years just before and immediately following the ” French Revolution of FEBURARY 1848.” THIS was the period when France was rapidly turning to complete Socialism.” A Reviewer of the book, ” THE LAW,” wrote this about what conditions excised in FRANCE, 1846, as exist in America today, The reviewer wrote,”…the same situation exist in America today as in the FRANCE of 1848. The same Socialist-Communist ideas and plans that were adopted in France are now sweeping America. The explanations and arguments then advanced against against Socialism by Mr. Bastiat are word for word equally valid today…”
IT’s not “Free” IF we the tax victim has to cover the bill for it!
They should get jobs, like the rest of us.
Just more of the Democrat insane socialist rewarding of individual life failure, that eventually leads collective failure on a national failure. It these California nut jobs spent more time disciplining and taxing those who refuse to contribute their fair share to society, maybe the concept of SELF-Government could again arise in the hearts and minds of the people of Californian who are blessed with so much natural resources and wealth that they continue to waste on handouts to people, who just create more social failures and growing tent cities making the entire state of California a magnet that draws more socially dependent life losers into in, and drives out THE PEOPLE capable to self-govern, but cannot because of the Newsom governing financial “Death by a thousand cuts” that slices and dices and sane human spirits will to excel, will to succeed and become something and someone greater than what they were, who are fleeing that state like the Jews fled Egypt and their reality Queens of de Nile, who refused to grasp what makes humanity human, motivated and successful. In California today, failure is not only an option, but the path to a feckless freeloading life style, that in reality resembles nothing of the human experience, creating walking brain dead zombies not fit to be allowed to vote in human elections. Nobody should be able to vote themselves $500/mo. democrat payoffs to a one way party vote.
Just who do they think i going to Pay for this Period
“The rich” of course.. 😉
$500/month? In California? With their stratospheric standards of living? Drop in a bucket. This insanity will no doubt spread across the country. As one columnist said the other day, we will become the United States of California eventually. We the People have screwed ourselves. We get what we ask for. When this whole corrupted system detonates…it will make the 2007 bank crisis and October 1929 look like church picnics.
Buying votes !!
Okay Everybody, pack up and head to Sacramento for yo’ Free Stuff! Unless you’re Black, of course, in which case, head to San Francisco where you’ll get a much more lucrative deal – up to $5-million each. Is this a great country, or what?
Of course everybody is “happier” with an extra $500/month. I’d love an extra $500 myself. But do you know what will happen VERY quickly? The cost of living in Sacrament will go up (SURPRISE!) by about $500/month. Exactly the same problem as with the “minimum wage” debacle. These “planners” don’t understand the first thing about finance, economics, or human nature. What a bunch of morons.