South San Francisco’s guaranteed income program — the city’s plan to pay 160 residents $500 monthly for a year — got a boost this week from the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in the form of a $100,000 grant to help fund the effort.
The South San Francisco City Council approved the pilot program earlier this year in hopes of easing the economic burden on some of the city’s most vulnerable residents. Recipients, who have already been chosen, were selected via a tiered lottery system from nearly 800 applicants, with priority given to foster youth transitioning out of care, single heads of households and those in the city’s lowest income neighborhoods.
“What I’m hoping for is that South San Francisco can be the lead in terms of showing how guaranteed income can work,” Vice Mayor Mark Nagales said, who spearheaded the program.
Guaranteed income programs, an increasingly explored topic among progressive leaders, seek to pay residents unconditionally, without work requirements or other restrictions often associated with welfare systems.
In addition to the county grant, the city will access $1 million in federal pandemic relief funds and another $100,000 from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation for the program. Nagales said he hopes the one-year pilot will provide data to aid in applying for additional funds from government or charitable sources to extend the program beyond the initial year.
Along with cash, income recipients will be offered financial counseling and other resources administered by YMCA Community Resource Center. The center, a resource hub for the county, will manage the pilot, collect data and provide quarterly reports on spending trends and surveys. The first round of funds is expected to go out in December.
Inspired by the universal basic income initiative implemented in Stockton in 2019, Nagales said he hopes other cities will in turn be inspired by South San Francisco’s effort. The city will be the first in the county to try such a program.
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“I’ve talked to numerous elected officials up and down this county and they’re interested in doing it as well,” Nagales said. “They’re kind of just waiting and seeing what happens in South San Francisco.”
Los Angeles recently approved a three-year program to give $1,000 monthly to 150 young adult residents, and other cities in the United States have begun similar experiments. State lawmakers this year signed off on $35 million in the state budget for guaranteed income programs — one of the funds Nagales is hoping to tap.
The Stockton program, which provided $500 monthly to 125 people for two years, was analyzed by a team of independent researchers, who found that those receiving the income increased their full-time employment as well as improved their financial, physical and emotional health.
The South San Francisco program was made available to undocumented people and those formerly incarcerated, important points for some activists.
“Escaping poverty by improving financial circumstances can be complicated by the unaffordability of the basic tools to do so,” San Mateo County Supervisor Dave Pine said in a statement regarding the board’s vote. “In similar programs, there is evidence that such additional support can prove pivotal in helping to lift families out of poverty.”
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