<
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-17/new-york-universal-basic-income-program-for-mothers-expands>
"A monthly cash payment program for new mothers in New York is going from pilot
project to permanent program, as the city debates using public dollars to fuel
guaranteed income initiatives.
The Bridge Project, which launched in 2021 through the Monarch Foundation,
started as a temporary program that gave monthly debit cards to pregnant
mothers in northern Manhattan neighborhoods, hoping to test the benefits of
no-strings-attached cash on the first three years of a baby’s life. In the
coming months, the program will open to mothers in Brooklyn, Staten Island and
Queens — as well as the upstate city of Rochester, New York. Participants
receive $1,000 a month for 18 months, and then $500 a month for another 18
months after that.
Local guaranteed income pilots like the Bridge Project, which give out direct
payments without conditions like work requirements, gained popularity during
the Covid-19 pandemic. Led by mayors, county leaders and nonprofits, the
initiatives put forth both immediate and longer-term goals: to address economic
inequality and racial disparities in their own regions, to break down stigmas
about poverty, and to establish political will for a national guaranteed income
program. Most of the pilots thus far have lasted only a few years, and focused
on generating research on the effects of consistent cash on particularly
vulnerable populations.
As the Bridge Project recruits a new cohort of mothers to receive benefits, it
is transitioning from a piloting-and-research phase into a more permanent one,
says Megha Agarwal, the executive director of the Monarch Foundation and of the
Bridge Project, which she co-founded. While there’s no assurance that the
funding won’t end, it’s the first guaranteed income program in the country to
make a commitment to continue indefinitely. The first three phases cost more
than $32 million for 1,100 participants.
As pilots around the country wrap up and release information about their local
impacts, Agarwal hopes cities start treating guaranteed income not as an
experiment, but as a key part of their social services infrastructure. “My hope
is that over time we move away from the piloting approach and recognize that
once we have a lot of data in our hands, a lot of stories in our hands, we're
able to make the argument that something like this should be taken up by our
public dollars,” she said."
Via
The Fixer May 24, 2023:
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/a-canadian-river-rises-from-the-dead/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
