Austin becomes the first Texas city to experiment with ‘guaranteed income’

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Austin would be the first main Texas city to use native tax dollars to offer money to low-income households to maintain them housed as the cost of living skyrockets in the capital city.

Below a yearlong, $1 million pilot program that cleared a key Austin Metropolis Council vote Thursday, the city will send monthly checks of $1,000 to 85 needy households at risk of losing their houses — an attempt to insulate low-income residents from Austin’s increasingly costly housing market and stop more people from changing into homeless.

“We can find folks moments earlier than they find yourself on our streets that forestall them, divert them from being there,” Mayor Steve Adler mentioned at a press conference Thursday morning. “That would be not solely fantastic for them, it would be clever and good for the taxpayers in the city of Austin as a result of it will be rather a lot inexpensive to divert somebody from homelessness than to help them discover a residence once they’re on our streets.”

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Eight Austin Metropolis Council members voted Thursday to ascertain the “assured revenue” pilot program and contract with a California nonprofit to run it.

Austin joins at the least 28 U.S. cities, like Los Angeles, Chicago and Pittsburgh, that have tried some form of guaranteed income. Regionally, the thought got here out of efforts to transform how the city tackles public security within the wake of protests over police brutality in 2020.

Different Texas metro areas have experimented with assured income programs throughout the pandemic. Packages in San Antonio and El Paso County have sent common funds to low-income households utilizing a combination of federal stimulus dollars and charitable contributions. Austin is believed to have the only program fully funded by local taxpayers.

Austin officers are working out how exactly the program will work and which families will obtain the money. Austinites who qualify received’t have restrictions on how they can spend the cash — but the thought is that they’ll use it to pay family costs like rent, utilities, transportation and groceries.

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City officers have floated some potentialities relating to who ought to qualify for assist: residents who have an eviction case filed in opposition to them or have trouble paying their utility bills, in addition to people already experiencing homelessness.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, some council members voiced considerations in regards to the relative lack of particulars about the program and questioned whether it was a good idea for Austin to make use of native tax dollars to fund this system, slightly than letting the federal authorities or nonprofits take the lead.

“I believe that we do have to invest in people and their primary wants, but I’m unsure that this is the appropriate method at the moment,” council member Alison Alter mentioned at Thursday’s meeting earlier than voting in opposition to the measure.

Brion Oaks, the town’s chief fairness officer, instructed metropolis officials in a memo that the Urban Institute, a nonprofit think tank primarily based in Washington, D.C., will assist measure the program’s affect by factors like contributors’ monetary stability, stress ranges and general wellness over the course of receiving the funds.

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Preliminary findings from an identical pilot program confirmed some promising results. UpTogether, the California nonprofit that can run the Austin program, ran a separate assured earnings program funded by non-public dollars in Austin and Georgetown that resulted in March, the nonprofit stated in a statement Thursday. That program gave 173 households $1,000 a month for a yr, and the nonprofit stated individuals used the money for expenses like hire and mortgage funds, little one care, gas and groceries.

Some were capable of increase their savings, greater than half of recipients slashed their debt by 75% and more than a third eradicated their family debt, the nonprofit mentioned.

In accordance with Austin’s Ending Neighborhood Homelessness Coalition, the town has greater than 3,100 individuals experiencing homelessness. An area ban on most evictions during the pandemic kept the number of eviction case fillings low in contrast with different major Texas cities, but that quantity has exploded for the reason that ban ended final 12 months.

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Guaranteed revenue may be one approach to put a dent in those problems, proponents said.

“That is about preventing displacement, preventing eviction and guaranteeing that our families are able to stay of their residence, that we have now that stability,” council member Vanessa Fuentes stated.

Disclosure: Steve Adler, a former Texas Tribune board chair, has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that's funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no position in the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a complete checklist of them right here.

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Clarification, May 6, 2022: This story has been up to date to mirror that Austin is the first Texas metropolis to use native tax dollars for a “assured income” program, and that other Texas cities have experimented with similar packages utilizing different sorts of funding.