Austin became the first major city in Texas where residents are paid money just like that: who can apply - ForumDaily
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Austin became the first major city in Texas where residents are paid money just like that: who can apply

Austin will become the first major city in Texas to use local tax dollars to provide cash to low-income families to provide them with housing as the cost of living in the capital skyrockets, reports Click2Houston.

Photo: Shutterstock

As part of a $1 million annual pilot program that ended with a key vote in the Austin City Council on May 5, the city will send $1000 monthly checks to 85 families in need who are at risk of losing their homes. This is an attempt to shield low-income residents from the increasingly expensive housing in Austin and prevent more people from becoming homeless.

“Not only would this be great for people in need, it would be smart and smart for the taxpayers in the city of Austin because it would be much cheaper to save someone from homelessness than it would be to help them find a home when they are on our streets,” Mayor Steve Adler said at a press conference on the morning of May 5th.

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Eight members of the Austin City Council voted in favor of creating a "guaranteed income" pilot program and contracting a non-profit organization in California to run it.

Austin joins at least 28 US cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Pittsburgh that have attempted some form of guaranteed income program. Locally, the idea came from efforts to change how the city handles public safety in the wake of the 2020 protests against police brutality.

Other areas in Texas have experimented with guaranteed income programs during the pandemic. Programs in San Antonio and El Paso County send regular payments to low-income households using a combination of federal aid and charitable contributions. Austin is believed to be the only program funded entirely by local taxpayers.

Austin officials are planning exactly how the program will work and which families will receive the money. Eligible Austin residents will have no restrictions on how they can spend the money, but the idea is that they will use it to pay for household expenses such as rent, utilities, transportation and groceries.

The City has put forward several options as to who should qualify for assistance: residents facing eviction cases or having trouble paying their utility bills, and people already homeless.

In the lead-up to the May 5 vote, some council members raised concerns about the relative lack of details about the program and questioned whether it was a good idea for Austin to use local taxes to fund the program rather than let the federal government or nonprofits take the lead. .

"I believe we need to invest in people and their basic needs, but I'm not sure that's the right way to go today," council member Alison Alter said at the meeting before voting against the measure.

Brion Oakes, the city's chief wealth officer, told the city in a memo that the Urban Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., will help measure the program's impact by looking at factors such as participants' financial stability, stress levels, and overall condition. well-being during the entire period of receiving funds.

Preliminary results from a similar pilot program have shown some promising results.

UpTogether, a California nonprofit that will administer the program in Austin, launched a separate private dollar-funded guaranteed income program in Austin and Georgetown that ended in March, the nonprofit said in a statement. The program gave 173 families $1000 a month for a year, and the organization said participants used the money for expenses such as rent and mortgage payments, child care, fuel and groceries.

Some managed to increase their savings, more than half of the recipients reduced their debt by 75%, and more than a third eliminated their household debt.

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There are more than 3100 homeless people in the city, according to the Austin Homelessness Coalition. The local ban on most evictions during the pandemic has resulted in eviction cases being low compared to other major Texas cities, but that number has skyrocketed since the ban ended last year.

A guaranteed income could be one way to address these issues, advocates say.

"It's about preventing displacement, preventing eviction and ensuring that our families can stay in their homes so that we have this stability," council member Vanessa Fuentes said.

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Miscellanea In the U.S. Texas guaranteed income program
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