A new guaranteed income program has just been announced in the US, this time in the country’s second largest city, Los Angeles. In his proposed budget for the fiscal year 2021-2022, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti included a $24-million guaranteed basic income project that would see 2,000 families in the city receive an unconditional $1,000 per month for one year. Dubbed “BIG: LEAP” (Basic Income Guaranteed: L.A. Economic Assistance Pilot), the program is one of the biggest of its kind in the US. The announcement was made at the end of April when the city budget proposed for the financial year starting 1 July 2021 was unveiled, the budget is usually approved by the beginning of June.
The details of the plan are being finalised, but the Mayor has confirmed that the payment would be truly unconditional with participants in the program able to use the money however they please. There will be eligibility criteria however such as being at or below the federal poverty line (annual income of $12,880 for a single individual / $17,420 for two persons) and, most likely, supporting a child under the age of 18 and demonstrating financial or medical hardship connected to COVID-19. Immigration status, on the other hand, will not constitute a selection criteria. It also seems that the income will go to households and not individuals.
If approved, BIG: LEAP will be the latest in a series of city-led guaranteed income programs in the country. Jackson, Mississippi in 2018 and Stockton, California in 2019 with the launch of “SEED” (Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration) paved the way and over the past two years, cities as diverse as Oakland (CA), Patterson (NJ), Denver (CO), Chicago (IL), Gary (IN) and many more across the country have announced or implemented some form of guaranteed income programs.
And these efforts do not occur only at a city level. In Southern California alone, in addition to BIG: LEAP or the pilot implemented in Compton (Compton Pledge), the L.A. County Board of Supervisors has just passed two separate motions asking relevant staff in the administration to design a guaranteed income program for targeted county residents. These first designs are due within 60 days of the motions, i.e. by the third week of July (motion 1; motion 2). Within the city of Los Angeles there are also specific guaranteed income pilots in the South LA and Downtown districts.
Map: main city-led guaranteed income pilots in the US and network of “Mayors for a Guaranteed Income”
Note: programs vary from one city to the next (eligibility criteria, payment amount, duration). Some of the programs that have been announced are yet to be formally approved and started. The map also does not include other initiatives such as, for instance, the payment under the Alaska Permanent Fund which has sometimes been compared to a basic income. (Map by the author, sources: Mashable.com and Mayors for a Guaranteed Income)
Eligibility criteria vary in each city as do the amount of the cash payment or the duration of the experiment but at any rate, the multiplication of the number of programs in progress is indicative of the growing interest for basic income in the US. The COVID crisis is certainly a factor behind this growing momentum. One of the potential eligibility criteria outlined by Mayor Garcetti in his proposal for the experiment in L.A. directly relates to the pandemic. San Francisco has designed a program targeted at artists hit by the crisis and other cities have referenced the impacts of COVID-19 on the economic situation as one of the factors behind their interest for basic income.
Many of these city-led efforts are being supported by Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (MGI), a nation-wide network of mayors founded by former Stockton Mayor and initiator of the SEED program, Michael D. Tubbs. It is supported by various foundations and non-profit organisations such as the Economic Security Project (involved in the Stockton experiment) or the Jain Family Institute (involved in Compton or in a proposed scheme in Newark, NJ). Indeed, whilst these various programs are first a way to alleviate poverty in specific communities and are only local in nature, they are also seen as experiments that will add to the debate around basic income at the federal level.
A Pew survey conducted in August 2020 concluded that 54% of Americans oppose or strongly oppose a federal universal basic income.* Proponents of these programs are hoping that the experiments they are conducting will add to the growing body of evidence that unconditional cash transfers not only help to alleviate poverty, but also improve physical and mental wellbeing and, importantly, that they do not remove incentives for people to work. More generally they are hoping that they will contribute to changing the narrative around poverty and economic insecurity.
*Online survey of 11,001 US adults conducted between July 27 and August 2, 2020, results vary across age groups, ethnicity, political affiliations, and income groups.
The Liberal Democrats in Hull have tabled a motion to Hull City Council that calls for the Chief Executive Matt Jukes to write to Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid, requesting Government support to pilot Universal Basic Income (UBI) in Hull.
The Liberal Democrat Councillor Paul Drake-Davis, is moving the motion in a bid to tackle “increasing job insecurity” and says Universal Basic income will “help people reach their full creative and economic potential.”
Similar motions have been passed recently by Liverpool City Council and Sheffield City Council. In addition, UBI Labs have been set up to explore the potential of the policy being piloted regionally in Leeds, Sheffield and Kirklees.
Paul Drake-Davis as added, just before the actual meeting at Hull City Council, over which his motion on “local economy and the Universal Basic Income pilot” was to be presented
We live in a world of increasing job insecurity, where more and more people in Hull and across the UK are struggling to plan and build a better future for themselves and their families. Instead, people are just focused on surviving month-to-month, there needs to be a change to the system.
I feel Hull, being a pioneering and progressive city, should join groundbreaking studies which are already taking place across the country to see if a Universal Basic Income has the potential to positively transform the lives and thereby the economy, wealth and wellbeing of our city.
The motion itself argues that UBI “has the potential to improve wellbeing and provide another boost to our local economy and share out prosperity in the city by safeguarding its most vulnerable residents”. It draws attention to present-day economic precariousness, and job insecurity, which are threatening people’s livelihood, and so calls for a UBI pilot scheme in the city of Hull.
As a result of the above-mentioned meeting, the motion at stake was passed, although much is still to be done, regarding organizing and securing funding for the UBI experiment.
Gaspesie and Îles-de-la-Madeleine regional public health director Yv Bonnier Viger is convinced that basic income can have dramatic positive effects on people’s health. So much so that the local public health sector, plus other regional organizations focused on health, well-being and poverty alleviation, are pushing for a 20-year long experiment in these two localities, also including Bas-Saint-Laurent.
Viger already knows the usual results of basic income experiments: “The experiments done around the world have always given results that go along the same direction: reducing mortality, violence, urgent care visits, hospitalizations, etc.”, he says. Moreover, he is also aware that people (according to experiments) do not use unconditional cash to acquire superfluous things, or to stop working as a result of receiving it. In this context, an (basic income) experimental setup in this region would expectedly be confirming these same results tested at other locations.
This setup is being considered as a negative income tax (NIT), after knowing each recipient declared annual income. After surveying true living costs in the three municipalities abovementioned, the idea is to dispense (every two weeks) unconditional cash gradually, for all those earning less than 40000 CAN$/year. The income starting point – someone earning 0 CAN$/month – would then become 17500 CAN$/year, which approximately amounts to Quebec’s official poverty line.
Financing the experiment would be based on replacing conditional social aid already in place in the region, without touching, however, retirement income (which is based on lifetime contributions). The project’s overall annual cost has been estimated at 800 million CAN$, which is expected to diminish over time, as more savings are made available in the public health sector, social aid management and other public related expenditures.
Tami L. Gouveia (left) and James B. Eldridge (right). Picture credit to Lusoamericano (Tami) and Wikipedia (James).
Although it is considered an unlikely pass, House Bill 1632, which would put in place a basic income pilot test in the state of Massachusetts, is being discussed at the local parliament. This pilot program would broadly consist on unconditionally dispensing 1000 $/month to 100 randomly selected citizens, for a three-year period of time. Random selection would occur from “three economically diverse cities or towns”, from which one would be a rural setting.
The presentation of the bill has spurred discussion among state lawmakers and politicians, initiated by Democrats Sen. James B. Eldridge and Rep. Tami L. Gouveia, with the support of the Department of Housing and Community Development. Under the referred bill, the latter would study the effects (e.g.: economic and institutional inequalities) of the rolled out basic income pilot test, and submit a final report after three years.
Ras Baraka, present-day mayor of Newark, has announced the intention of rolling out a universal basic income (UBI) pilot program in the city. Newark, a city just outside Manhattan island, is plagued by poverty (around one third of its population lives under the poverty line), and that is the prime motivation for going through with the pilot.
Baraka has said that “We believe in universal basic income, especially in a time where studies have shown that families that have a crisis of just $400 a month may experience a setback that may be difficult, even impossible to recover from”. No specifics were put forward on how or when this pilot is going to be executed, but the idea is to test what happens when people are given an income, regardless of their employment status. Those specifics will be studied by his administration staff, as part of the pilot’s planning.
If Newark goes ahead with this UBI pilot program, it will be the second city in USA to carry on an experiment with unconditional cash stipends, after Stockton, California. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) had been planning the experiment for about 18 months, before it started in February 2019. Under the SEED pilot, 130 adults will receive 500 $/month, unconditionally, for 18 months, while monitored for spending and saving habits, their quality of life and financial stability.
