by Karl Widerquist | Jul 22, 2014 | News, The Indepentarian
The national parliament of Cyprus has introduced a policy with a name that translates as “guaranteed minimum income” or “minimum guaranteed income.” The name sounds like a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG). It is not, but it appears to be a significant step in that direction. The law was enacted 10 July 2014, and the first recipients started signing up on 14 July 2014. According to the Cyprus Daily, the law provides a minimum income of 480 Euros for Cypriot citizen, “irrespective of whether they are unemployed, pensioners or self-employed. … For every additional family member over 14, including the wife or husband, 50% of the initial amount of €480 (240) will be added to the benefit. For members under 14, an additional 30% (€144) will be added.” According to Cyprus Mail, the government arrived at those amounts using figures including the average cost of rent in Cyprus, cost of living and entertainment and others.
The guarantee is means tested—making it closer to the Negative Income Tax than to the Basic Income form of BIG. Income must be “less than the real needs of the household,” and wealth must be less than $100,000 Euros for each member of the household. The new guaranteed minimum replace most existence state benefits in Cyprus. When the government proposed the idea of a “guaranteed minimum income” last year, the prime minister said it would come with a work expectation. Available reports so far make no mention of whether the final version included work requirements or how strict they are. However, the combination of benefits, the effort to meet basic needs through cash benefits, and the ability to keep them whether employed or not is a significant step in the direction of a true basic income guarantee, a step that few if any Western industrialized nations have yet taken.
For more information on the new law see:
InCyprus, “Guaranteed minimum income approved.” The Cypress Daily: InCyprus.com, 11 July 2014
Cyprus Mail, “Large family benefits not to be impacted by GMI.” Cyprus Mail, July 22, 2014
Cyprus Mail, “Our View: Public sector cuts could finance better welfare system.” Cyprus Mail, July 22, 2014
Applicants sign up for Guarantteed Minimum Income -Cyprus Mail
by Karl Widerquist | Jul 17, 2014 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
The 15th International Congress of the Basic Income Earth Network was held in Montreal at McGill University from June 27 to June 29, 2014, and a pre-conference North American day was held on June 26. The event was sold out with well over 200 people attending.
Two of the central topics at the conference were the recent basic income pilot projects the recent petition drives for basic income. Renana Jhabvala, of Self-Employed Women’s Association and Guy Standing, of School of Oriental and African Studies discussed the recent pilot project in India. Among other results, basic income was found to increase health and employment.
Enno Schmidt, Co-founder of the Initiative Basic Income in Switzerland and president of the Cultural Impulse Switzerland Foundation, and Stanislas Jourdan, Co-founder of the French Movement for Basic Income and Coordinator for Unconditional Basic Income Europe, talked with Barbara Jacobson, of Basic Income UK, and Philippe Van Parijs, of BIEN, about the citizens initiatives of basic income in Switzerland and the European Union (EU). Between the two initiatives, activists raises more than 400,000 signatures, enough to trigger a vote in Switzerland to take place in 2015 or 2016. Although the EU movement did not receive enough signatures to trigger a vote, it created headlines across the continent, sparked a pan-European movement for BIG (UBIEurope), and organized national movements in all of the EU’s member states.
Joe Soss, of University of Minnesota, gave the NABIG (North American Basic Income Guarantee) lecture, which was surprisingly optimistic despite its depressing title, “Disciplining the Poor, Downsizing Democracy?” He discussed how many recent social policies from welfare “reform” to the 500% increase in the incarceration rate are part of an international trend toward treating poverty as willful misbehavior curable only by discipline. The optimism came from his belief that people are coming to recognize what’s been happening, and they’re fighting back through various movements.
The conference included a good mix of academics and activists. The Congress generated press around Canada and to some extent around the world. Some of the attendees started an international youth activist organization for the basic income, called Basic Income Generation. The Basic Income Canada Network furthered its push for a $20,000 basic income for all Canadians. The theme of technological unemployment recurred through many of the sessions—much more than it has in any past BIEN Congress. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twentieth Century, was discussed by many of the academics at the Congress. And discussion of the Great Recession was frequent.
The Congress closed with BIEN’s General Assembly (GA) meeting. The GA voted to recognize five new affiliates from Norway, France, Portugal, Europe (UBIEurope) and the Southern African Development Community (the SADC BIG Coalition). UBIEurope and the SADC BIG Coalition have become BIEN’s first transnational affiliates.
A new Executive Committee (EC) was elected by the GA, including Louise Haagh and Karl Widerquist as Co-Chairs, Anja Askeland as Secretary, Borja Barragué as Treasurer, and Andrea Fumagalli, Toru Yamamori, Pablo Yanes Rizo, and Jason Murphy as EC members for News and Outreach.
Several issues were tabled (delayed) due to lack of time. These included some proposed amendments to BIEN’s statutes and a proposal to change BIEN’s definition of unconditional basic income to include a clause that it must be high enough to allow individuals to live in dignity.
The GA ended with a bit of drama. Before we could give up the room to the cleaning crew, which had been waiting much longer than they expected, the GA had to decide the location of the next Congress between three impressive proposals from affiliates in Finland, the Netherlands, and South Korea. As time was running out, the representatives of Netherlands and Finland both dropped their bid in favor of Seoul, Korea, and the motion was quickly passed unanimously.
I think I speak for all of BIEN’s leadership when I write that we are looking forward to working with Korea on the 2016 Congress and to working with UBIE and all of BIEN’s European affiliates to help build on the political moment for basic income has devleoped on that continent.
-Karl Widerquist, Cru Coffee House, Beaufort, North Carolina, June 13, 2014
Some of the press coverage of the BIEN Congress:
Ahn Hyo-sang, “[Special report] Basic income movement gaining momentum worldwide.” The Hankyoreh, July12, 2014.
Benjamin Shingler, “$20,000 per person: Activists push for guaranteed minimum income for Canadians” The Globe and Mail, 29 June 2014.
Beryl Wajsman, “The fierce urgency for a guaranteed national income”, The Metropolitain, 30 June 2014.
The Canadian Press, “Guaranteed $20K income for all Canadians endorsed by academics”, CBC News, 30 June 2014.
Deirdre Fulton, “New Campaign Pushes for ‘Basic Income Guarantee’ in Canada“, Common Dreams, 3 July 2014.
Dan Delmar, “The Exchange Podcast with Dan Delmar,” CJAD 800AM Radio, 2 July 2014. [Discussion of BIG begins about 18 minutes into the broadcast.]
Jacob Kearey-Moreland, “Universal Income Worth a Look”, Orilla Packet, 4 July 2014.
Mélanie Loisel, “Le revenu garanti est la voie de l’avenir, croit Blais”, Le Devoir, 30 June 2014.
by Karl Widerquist | Jul 4, 2014 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
This book was recommended to me as technology-based argument for the basic income guarantee (BIG), and it is, but its support is tentative and only for BIG in the form of the Negative Income Tax (NIT), not in the form of a Universal Basic Income (UBI).
The authors define the computer revolution that is currently underway as “the second machine age.” The industrial revolution was “the first machine age.” It brought machines that could apply power to do simple but profoundly important tasks, eventually replacing most human- and animal-powered industries with steam, electrical power, and so on. Machines of the first machine age could often do those tasks much better than humans or beasts of burden ever could. For example, the replacements for horses—automobiles, trains, and airplanes—can carry more people and more cargo father and faster than horses ever could.
Machines of the second machine age have gone beyond the application of power; they are also replacing some human brainwork. Calculators have been around so long that few people are aware they replaced a form of human labor, called “computers.” In the early 20th century, “computers” were people who did computations. It was skilled brainwork, far beyond the capabilities of the up-and-coming technologies of the day, such as the internal combustion engine. Computers (as we define the term today) have almost entirely replaced that form of human labor, and their ability to substitute for human labor only continues to increase—especially when combined with robotics.
The computational powers of computers are so strong can already beat the best chess masters and “Jeopardy” champions. Self-driving cars, which have turned driving into a complex computational task, will not only relieve us all of the task of driving to work, they have the potential to put every professional driver out of business. Perhaps computers, then, will someday learn not just to calculate, but also to think and evaluate. If so, might they eventually replace the need for all human labor?
Perhaps, but Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, the authors of the Second Machine Age, do not base their arguments on any such scenario. The possibility of a truly thinking computer is out there, but no one knows how to make a computer think, and no one knows when or how that might happen.
So, the authors focus on the improvements in computers that we can see and envision right now: machines that can augment and aid human thought with computational ability increasing at the current exponential rate. As long as computers are calculating but not truly thinking, humans will have an important role in production. For example, although computers can beat an unaided chess master, they cannot beat a reasonably skilled human chess player aided by computer. This is the focus of the book: computers and robotics taking over routinized tasks (both physical and mental), while humans still the deep thinking with access to aid from more and more computer power.
This change will be enough to radically transform the labor market and eliminate many (if not most) of the jobs that currently exist. At the enormous rate of increase in computing power, one does not have to envision a self-aware, sentient machine to see that the effects on the economy will be profound. According to the authors, “in the next 24 months, the planet will add more computer power than it did in all previous history; over the next 24 years, the increase will likely be over a thousand-fold.”
The book’s analysis of those changes is very much based on mainstream economic theory. In the books analysis, increases in unemployment and decreases in wages are attributed almost entirely to a decline in demand for labor thanks to the introduction of labor-replacing technology. Political economy considerations, in which powerful people and corporations manipulate the rules of the economy to keep wages low and employment precarious, are not addressed. When the authors consider shifting taxes from payroll to pollution, they don’t consider that powerful corporations have been using their power over the political process very effectively to block any such changes.
Yet, the book demonstrates that even with purely mainstream economic tools, the need to do something is obvious. We have to address the effects of the computer revolution on the labor market. The second machine age creates an enormous opportunity for everyone to become free from drudgery, to focus their time on the goals that they care most about. But it also creates a great danger in which all the benefits of second machine age will go to the people and corporations who own the machines, while the vast majority of people around the world who depend on the labor market to make their living will find themselves fighting for fewer jobs with lower and lower wages.
The technology-replacement argument for BIG has been a major strand in BIG literature at least since the Robert Theobald began writing about the “triple revolution” in the early 1960s.[i] So, approaching this book as I did, I was on the lookout through a large chuck of the book, waiting for BIG to come up. I was very surprised to see the entire “Policy Recommendations” chapter go by without a mention of BIG.
The authors finally addressed BIG in the penultimate chapter entitled, “long-term recommendations.” In the audio version of the book, the authors spend about 20 minutes (out of the 9-hour audiobook) talking about BIG. They recount some of the history of the guaranteed income movement in the United States with sympathy, and write, “Will we need to revive the idea of a basic income in the decades to come? Maybe, but it’s not our first choice.” They opt instead for an NIT, writing “We support turning the Earned Income Tax Credit into a full-fledged Negative Income Tax by making it larger and making it universal.”
Their discussion of why they prefer the NIT to UBI is perhaps the weakest part of the book. They favor work. They want to maintain the wage-labor economy, because, taking inspiration from Voltaire, they argue that work saves people from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. I am skeptical about this claim. I view it as an employers’ slogan to justify a subservient workforce, but my skepticism about this argument is not why I find the book’s argument for the NIT over UBI to be the weakest part of the book. The reason is that the argument from work-incentives gives no reason to prefer the NIT to UBI. The authors view the NIT as a “work subsidy,” but it is no more a work subsidy than UBI.
The NIT and the UBI are both BIGs, by that, I mean they both guarantee a certain level below which no one’s income will fall—call this the “grant level.” Both allow people to live without working. UBI does this by giving the grant to everyone whether they work or not, but taxing them on their private income. NIT does this by giving the full grant only to those who make no private income and taking a little of it back as they make private income. In standard economic theory, the “take-back rate” of the NIT is equivalent to the “tax-rate” of the UBI, and so either one can be called “marginal tax rate.”
Applying standard mainstream economic theory (which is used throughout the book), the variables that affect people’s labor market behavior are the grant level and marginal tax rate. The higher the grant level and the higher the marginal tax rate, the lower the incentive to work whether the BIG is an NIT or a UBI. You can have an NIT or a UBI with high or low marginal tax rates and grant levels, and you can have a UBI or an NIT that have the same grant level and marginal tax rate. It is for this reason that Milton Friedman, the economist and champion of the NIT, gave for drawing equivalence between the two programs:
INTERVIEWER: “How do you evaluate the proposition of a basic or citizen´s income compared to the alternative of a negative income tax?”
FRIEDMAN: “A basic or citizen’s income is not an alternative to a negative income tax. It is simply another way to introduce a negative income tax”.
-Eduardo Suplicy, USBIG NewsFlash interview, June 2000, https://www.usbig.net/newsletters/june.html
If the book’s arguments for work incentives are sound, I seen an argument for a modest BIG with a low marginal tax rate, but I see no argument one way or another why the BIG should be under the NIT or the UBI model.
Whatever one thinks about the issue of NIT versus UBI, the book presents an extremely sophisticated and powerful argument for moving in the direction of BIG. Therefore, it is a book that anyone interested in any form of BIG should examine closely.
-Karl Widerquist, Cru Coffee House, Beaufort, North Carolina, June 2, 2014, revised June 14, 2014
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. Audio edition: Grand Haven, Michigan: Brilliance Audio, 2014.
[i] Mostly in three works, The Challenge of Abundance (1961), The Triple Revolution (1964), and The Guaranteed Income (1966).
by Karl Widerquist | Jul 1, 2014 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
Marshall Brain is a science writer (both fiction and non-), futurist, founder of the website How Stuff Works, and a long-time advocate of basic income. His book, Manna: Two Visions of Humanity’s Future, makes a case for basic income—and for a post-work society altogether—through the vehicle of science fiction.
The novel is essentially a thought experiment, working through two possible ways in which society might react when technology becomes so sophisticated that machines replace virtually all human labor. In the dystopian part of the story, America essentially warehouses its excess human labor in humane, but highly restricted and regimented residential community. In the later part of the story, the main character makes his way to Australia where the resources that make the machines run are jointly owned, and people do not have to work if they do not want to.
The story moves quickly beyond basic income to a society that has no more need of paid labor. In Manna’s vision, there is such little need for human effort that people are free to pursue whatever projects they wish, some of which is things we would call “work” but not “paid labor.”
No doubt not all readers will find all aspects of Brain’s utopian vision to be truly utopian. His characters willingly concede a great deal of power over their lives and their own bodies to a centralized, impersonal computer system. They do it for security, but the fear that it will be misused will hit some readers even if it is ignored in the book.
The most important part of the book for BIG supporters is the warning in the dystopian portion of the book. America deals with less need for labor by squeezing wages and then eventually warehousing workers. Brain’s nonfiction work has argued that the rate of increase in computer and robotics technology makes the level of technology discussed in this book a realistic possibility—perhaps sooner than most of us think.
In any case, robotics technology is already here. It’s replacing human effort on a daily basis. It’s affecting our labor market, and those effects will increase every year from now on. Whether or not it will eventually replace all labor, we have to think about how to react to the labor it is now replacing on a daily basis. If we no longer need everyone to work, then BIG has to be part of the solution.
-Karl Widerquist, Cru Coffee House, Beaufort, North Carolina, June 2014
Marshall Brain, Manna: Two Visions of Humanity’s Future. BYG Publishing, Inc. 2012.
Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/Manna-Two-Visions-Humanitys-Future-ebook/dp/B007HQH67U.
Author’s website for the book: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm.
by Karl Widerquist | Apr 29, 2014 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
Al Sheahen. Photo courtesy of Tom Sheahen, via the Los Angeles Daily News
[Karl Widerquist]
Allan “Al” Sheahen was an author, an athlete, a disc jockey, a promoter, a publisher, and a long-time campaigner for the basic income guarantee (BIG). He died at his home in Sherman Oaks, California on October 29, 2013 after battling myelofibrosis (a slow-moving bone-marrow disease) for over ten years.
Sheahen is known in the movement for BIG as a tireless, long-term campaigner for BIG. He helped to found the USBIG Network. He helped keep the idea alive during the era in which it fell out of mainstream politics in the United States. And he wrote some of the best introductory books on BIG.
He was born in June 28, 1932 in Cleveland, Ohio and moved to California in 1957. His first book on BIG, Guaranteed Income: The Right to Economic Security (Gain Publications), was published in January of 1983—perhaps the nadir of the BIG movement in the United states.
BIG, under various names including the guaranteed income, had been a major topic in mainstream American politics from the mid-1960s to the mid-70s when it was seen by many people across the political spectrum as the obvious next step to improve the welfare system. However, BIG dropped out of favor in the late-70s when new right politicians such as Ronald Reagan found success vilifying the poor as a lazy rabble. Supporters of the welfare system went on the defensive and stopped looking for new ideas, except perhaps for those that placated the new right’s desire for stringent work requirements.
Into that void, Sheahen’s 1983 book argued that it made so much more sense just to put a floor under everyone’s income. He raised all the objections of the other side. He asked the toughest questions. He answered them with knowledgeable but disarmingly simple, compelling prose that anyone could understand. Many “BIGists” believe this book is still the best available introduction to BIG, with the possible exception of his 2012 book.
In the political climate of 1983, Sheahen’s book was widely ignored.
Mark Crumpton interviews Allan Sheahen -Bloomberg Television
Sheahen did not stop. He was a journalist, and he wrote a long string of editorials on BIG and other topics in publications across the country. Over the years he wrote for Time, the Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Daily News, the Huffington Post, and many other publications.
In 1999, the BIG movement began to revive in the United States. A group made up mostly of east coast academics established the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG). Sheahen quickly joined. He not only became a leader of the organization, but also, along with Robert Harris, Francis Fox Piven, and others, he gave the new movement for BIG a connection with the movement of the 1960s and 70s.
Basic Income Guarantee: Your Right to Economic Security
As a leader of USBIG, Sheahen stepped up his work. He attended and presented new ideas at the annual USBIG Congresses—now know as North American BIG (NABIG) Congresses—and at the biannual BIEN Congresses. In 2004 he coauthored the paper, “A Proposal to Transform the Standard Deduction into a Refundable Tax Credit,” which was the basis for a bill introduced into the U.S. Congress as “H.R. 5257 (109th): Tax Cut for the Rest of Us Act of 2006.” The idea of the bill was simple: replace the standard tax deduction with an equivalent-sized refundable tax credit, and in the process introducing a small BIG. The preamble to the bill states simply, “To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide a basic income guarantee in the form of a refundable tax credit for taxpayers who do not itemize deductions.”
Sheahen not only coauthored the paper on which the bill was based; he also lobbied for the bill. He made several trips to Washington and met with any Member of Congress or staffer who was willing to talk about the idea. He found a Member of Congress to introduce the bill and at least one other to sign on as cosponsor. But the bill did not get out of committee and expired at the end of 109th Congress. It has not as yet been introduced.
Sheahen’s next major project was a new book, The Basic Income Guarantee: Your Right to Economic Security (published June 19, 2012, by Palgrave Macmillan). It was largely an update of Sheahen’s 1983 book, but this time it was put out by a major publisher with greater distribution. According to former U.S. Senator and former Democratic nominee for president, George McGovern, “This book is a great idea – brilliantly stated. Some may think it’s ultra-liberal, as they did when I proposed a similar idea in 1972. I see it as true conservatism – the right of income for all Americans sufficient for food, shelter, and basic necessities. Or, what Jefferson referred to as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The book came out at a time with growing interest in BIG. It continues to sell well, and it is the most popular item in Palgrave’s book series, “Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee.” Sheahen followed up the book with a speaking tour and a large number of editorials in major newspapers. As late as August of 2013, less than 90 days before his death, Sheahen was on television, radio, and the print media campaigning for BIG. Right up to the end, after more than 30 years in the fight, Sheahen was one of the hardest working people in the BIG movement.
Allan Sheahan running hurdles -MasterTrack.com
When he wasn’t working on BIG, Sheahen was an author, a disc jockey, a publisher, an announcer, and a competitor in and leading organizer of Masters Athletics—athletics for men and women over 35 years old. He was active in Masters Track and Field for decades, and he was so important to the movement that when he died, Mastertrack entitled their bibliography, “A giant has died: Al Sheahen was our chronicler and conscience.” According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he served ten years as the Treasurer of the World Association of Veteran Athletes. He founded the magazine National Masters News and served as its editor for nearly four decades. According to The Los Angeles Daily News, in 1998, he was inducted into the Masters Track and Field Hall of Fame. His favored events were the 400-meter hurdles and the 3000-meter steeplechase—longest obstacle-jumping event in running. A long-distance obstacle race is a fitting metaphor for Sheahen’s three-decades of work for the BIG movement. The goal was far; the obstacles were many; and Sheahen ran on and on.
-Karl Widerquist, Mojo’s Coffee House, Freret Street, New Orleans, LA, April 2014
Personal note: I’ve worked with Al for nearly 15 years in USBIG, in BIEN, on the BIG Bill, and in Palgrave-Macmillan book series. At times he’s been a colleague, a mentor, and an inspiration—both from his hard work and from ability to communicate difficult ideas in an easily understandable way. It is a sad duty to write about his death.
For more on Al Sheahen and his work on Basic Income, see the following links:
The USBIG Network will organize a tribute to Al Sheahen at the Thirteenth Annual North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress, which will be held on June 26 in Montreal—a preconference workshop of the 15th International Congress of the Basic Income Earth Network, Friday June 27th to Sunday June 29th, 2014, McGill Faculty of Law, Montreal, Quebec.
Allan Sheahen -the Huffington Post
Ken Stone, “A giant has died: Al Sheahen was our chronicler and conscience.” MasterTrack, October 31, 2013.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Obituary: Allan John ‘Al’ Sheahen.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Nov. 3, 2013.
The Los Angeles Daily News. “Ode to Al Sheahen, a long time Daily News letters contributor.” The Los Angeles Daily News. October/31/13.
Allan Sheahen’s page at the Huffington Post.
USBIG, “Allan Sheahen tours to promote his book, the Basic Income Guarantee: Your right to economic security.” BI News, July 11, 2013.”
USBIG, “Allan Sheahen’s BIG tour continues.” BI News, July 21, 2013
VIDEO: Bloomberg national television discusses BIG, July 23, 2013
VIDEO: Huffington Post, 17-minute video discusses BIG: “America The Poor,” August 24, 2013
Allan Sheahen, “Fulfilling One Of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dreams: A Basic Income Guarantee.” International Business Times, August 20, 2013. (This is probably Sheahen’s last published article.
H.R. 5257 (109th): Tax Cut for the Rest of Us Act of 2006.
Al Sheahen and Karl Widerquist, “A Proposal to Transform the Standard Deduction into a Refundable Tax Credit.” USBIG Discussion Paper No. 93, August 2004 (Revised, October 2004).
This article was later revised and combined with a historical discussion of BIG in the United States, and published as:
Karl Widerquist and Allan Sheahen, September 3, 2012. “The Basic Income Guarantee in the United States: Past Experience, Current Proposals” in Basic Income Worldwide: Horizons of Reform, Matthew Murray and Carole Pateman (eds.) New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 11-32
Articles by and about Al Sheahen on BI News.
Allan Sheahen
by Karl Widerquist | Feb 22, 2014 | News, The Indepentarian
[Karl Widerquist]
A few years ago, the U.S. State of Utah introduced a program called Housing First, which fights homelessness by giving homeless people free housing. According to Jenny Swank of Nation Swell, recent reports estimate that Housing First “has reduced its rate of chronic homelessness by 74 percent over the past eight years, moving 2000 people off the street and putting the state on track to eradicate homelessness altogether by 2015.” Although the housing grant is in kind (meaning in goods) rather than in cash (as the BIG model would have it), and although it is granted only to those in need rather than to everyone, this program is a step toward a basic income guarantee because it is unconditional. Recipients are not required to work or to be available to work or to prove that they are unable to work or even to enter substance abuse treatment if they are abusers. Also, for the first time in the state, Housing First creates a legal right to housing. The apparent rationale is: whatever other problems individuals might have, they are better off with homes. Assessments indicate the program is cost-effective, and other states are looking at the program and considering imitating it. This is a great step towards making sure homeless people are not left out alone and have somewhere to go. Over time, they will gain employment and belongings that they can call their own. To make sure that they keep their homes and the contents of their homes secure, they may want to look over home warranty utah plans so they know what is covered just in case something happens where it affects their residence.
For more on the Utah program see:
David Weigel “Republican State Gives Free Houses to Moochers, Cuts Homelessness by 74 Percent,” Slate, Dec. 20 2013.
Terrance Heath, “Utah ending homelessness by giving people homes,” Nation of Change, 23 January 2014.
Jenny Shank, “Utah Is on Track to End Homelessness by 2015 With This One Simple Idea,” Nation Swell. December 19, 2013.
Utah’s “Housing Works” website has information about the Housing First approach.
-Nation Swell
