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A assured fundamental revenue program in Austin gave individuals $1,000 a month for a 12 months.
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Many of the members spent the no-string-attached money on housing, a research of this system discovered.
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Contributors who mentioned they may afford a balanced meal additionally elevated by 17%.
A guaranteed basic income plan in one in all Texas’s largest cities decreased charges of housing insecurity. However some Texas lawmakers will not be completely happy.
Austin was the primary metropolis in Texas to launch a tax-payer-funded basic income program when the Austin Assured Revenue Pilot kicked off in Might 2022. This system served 135 low-income households, every receiving as much as $1,000 month-to-month. Funding for 85 households got here from the Metropolis of Austin whereas philanthropic donations funded the opposite 50.
This system was billed as a way to spice up individuals out of poverty and assist them afford housing. “We all know that if we belief individuals to make the best choices for themselves and their households, it results in higher outcomes,” the town says on its web site. “It results in higher jobs, elevated financial savings, meals safety, housing safety.”
Whereas this system led to August 2023, a brand new study from the City Institute, a Washington DC-based assume tank, discovered that the town’s program did actually assist its members pay for housing and meals. On common, program members spent greater than half of the money they obtained on housing, the report’s authors wrote.
After the yearlong program, the members had been “considerably extra housing safe” than once they enrolled, whereas different Texas residents with low incomes grew to become “modestly much less housing safe” over the identical interval, the authors discovered.
This system additionally helped scale back meals insecurity amongst members — 17% fewer households had been unable to afford a balanced meal, the report says.
Taniquewa Brewster, a single mom who began receiving funds from this system in September 2022, told KXAN, an area NBC affiliate, that the cash she obtained helped her pay for medical bills and drugs following an eight-day hospital keep.
Whereas Austin was the primary metropolis in Texas to check a basic income program, it is not the one metropolis. However not everybody within the state helps them.
Final week, State Sen. Paul Bettencourt sent a letter to the state’s attorney general asking him to declare a brand new program in Houston unconstitutional.
Harris County, which incorporates Houston, earlier this month launched a assured fundamental revenue program that provides low-income residents as much as $500 a month.
This system’s lawyer advised the Houston Chronicle that Bettencourt was “extra centered on political video games and weaponizing authorities establishments than making life higher for the individuals of Harris County.”
Many different cities round the US are additionally experimenting with fundamental revenue tasks to deal with rising homelessness and assist their most susceptible residents. In Baltimore, the Baltimore Young Families Success Fund provides younger moms as much as $1,000 a month. The marketing campaign’s director of coverage, Tonaeya Moore, beforehand advised Enterprise Insider that surveys present that members principally spend their cash on the identical basic requirements, like housing and meals.
And in Denver, a fundamental revenue program that provides individuals as much as $1,000 a month was not too long ago prolonged after discovering it additionally increased housing security amongst its members.
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