City Council approved a pilot program at its May 5 meeting to provide monthly payments of $1,000 to 85 households for an entire year. Once people are accepted into thepilot, they will not have to"prove" they still need the assistance, as many government-run financial aid programs normally require., a California nonprofit that will administer the program. The remaining funds, which were approved by Council as a rider to the fiscal 2022 budget, will go to qualifying families.
These programs are guided by two core principles: that poor people know best where to spend what money they have, and that their needs can change faster than traditional public assistance programs can keep up.
Guaranteed income programs have lofty goals, and though similar programs exist in about 50 American cities, they remain largely untested as a means of reducing poverty. Council's vote to create Austin's pilot was postponed from its April 21 meeting in part because of questions about how to assess its effectiveness; staff intends to work with the, a D.C.-based think tank, to evaluate the program's success.
CMs also raised concerns that Texas law may not allow a guaranteed income program that's not targeted to address specific public policy challenges that the city faces. Staff intends to focus on qualifying indicators to select participants, such as households facing eviction, utility customers who consistently miss payments, or people transitioning from homelessness into supportive housing.
Right now, all the data we have on UpTogether's success comes from the nonprofit itself. At a press conference earlier in the day,, UpTogether's Southwest partnership director, said preliminary results from the St. David's Foundation pilot showed that all of the program's 125 participants used the money to pay for basic necessities like housing, food, clothes, and gas.
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