Austin turns into the first Texas metropolis to experiment with ‘assured revenue’

Join The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to the mark on essentially the most important Texas news.

Austin would be the first major Texas city to make use of local tax dollars to give money to low-income families to keep them housed as the price of residing skyrockets within the capital metropolis.

Underneath a yearlong, $1 million pilot program that cleared a key Austin City Council vote Thursday, town will send monthly checks of $1,000 to 85 needy households prone to shedding their houses — an try to insulate low-income residents from Austin’s increasingly expensive housing market and stop more people from becoming homeless.

“We can find folks moments earlier than they end up on our streets that prevent them, divert them from being there,” Mayor Steve Adler stated at a press convention Thursday morning. “That might be not only fantastic for them, it would be smart and good for the taxpayers within the city of Austin because it will be rather a lot less expensive to divert someone from homelessness than to assist them discover a home once they’re on our streets.”

Ad

Eight Austin Metropolis Council members voted Thursday to establish the “guaranteed earnings” pilot program and contract with a California nonprofit to run it.

Austin joins a minimum of 28 U.S. cities, like Los Angeles, Chicago and Pittsburgh, which have tried some type of guaranteed income. Regionally, the idea came out of efforts to rework how the town tackles public safety in the wake of protests over police brutality in 2020.

Other Texas metro areas have experimented with guaranteed revenue applications during the pandemic. Applications in San Antonio and El Paso County have sent common funds to low-income households using a mixture of federal stimulus dollars and charitable contributions. Austin is believed to have the one program totally funded by native taxpayers.

Austin officers are working out how exactly the program will work and which households will receive the cash. Austinites who qualify received’t have restrictions on how they will spend the cash — but the idea is that they’ll use it to pay household prices like rent, utilities, transportation and groceries.

Advert

Metropolis officers have floated some possibilities regarding who should qualify for assist: residents who have an eviction case filed towards them or have trouble paying their utility payments, in addition to folks already experiencing homelessness.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, some council members voiced issues in regards to the relative lack of particulars about this system and questioned whether or not it was a good suggestion for Austin to make use of native tax dollars to fund this system, relatively than letting the federal authorities or nonprofits take the lead.

“I imagine that we do have to invest in people and their primary needs, but I’m unsure that that is the correct method immediately,” council member Alison Alter stated at Thursday’s assembly earlier than voting against the measure.

Brion Oaks, the town’s chief equity officer, instructed city officials in a memo that the Urban Institute, a nonprofit think tank based mostly in Washington, D.C., will help measure this system’s affect by taking a look at elements like members’ monetary stability, stress ranges and general wellness over the course of receiving the funds.

Advert

Preliminary findings from an identical pilot program showed some promising outcomes. UpTogether, the California nonprofit that will run the Austin program, ran a separate guaranteed income program funded by personal dollars in Austin and Georgetown that ended in March, the nonprofit mentioned in a press release Thursday. That program gave 173 households $1,000 a month for a yr, and the nonprofit mentioned participants used the money for expenses like lease and mortgage funds, little one care, gasoline 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 stated.

According to Austin’s Ending Neighborhood Homelessness Coalition, the town has greater than 3,100 people experiencing homelessness. A neighborhood ban on most evictions throughout the pandemic stored the number of eviction case fillings low compared with different major Texas cities, but that number has exploded because the ban ended final year.

Advert

Guaranteed income could also be one option to put a dent in those issues, proponents mentioned.

“This is about stopping displacement, stopping eviction and making certain that our households are in a position to stay of their dwelling, that we've got that stability,” council member Vanessa Fuentes mentioned.

Disclosure: Steve Adler, a former Texas Tribune board chair, has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that's funded in part by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete record of them right here.

Assist mission-driven journalism flourish in Texas. The Texas Tribune relies on reader assist to continue delivering news that informs Texans and engages with them. Donate now to join as a Texas Tribune member. Plus, give month-to-month or yearly now via Could 5 and also you’ll assist unlock a $10K match. Give and double your influence at present.

Ad

Clarification, Might 6, 2022: This story has been up to date to replicate that Austin is the primary Texas city to use local tax dollars for a “assured income” program, and that other Texas cities have experimented with related programs utilizing other varieties of funding.