Austin turns into the first Texas city to experiment with ‘assured earnings’

Sign up for The Brief, our day by day newsletter that retains readers on top of things on essentially the most important Texas news.

Austin will be the first main Texas city to use local tax dollars to provide money to low-income households to keep them housed as the price of living skyrockets in the capital metropolis.

Beneath a yearlong, $1 million pilot program that cleared a key Austin City Council vote Thursday, town will ship monthly checks of $1,000 to 85 needy households liable to dropping their properties — an attempt to insulate low-income residents from Austin’s more and more costly housing market and prevent extra people from turning into homeless.

“We will discover individuals moments before they find yourself on our streets that stop them, divert them from being there,” Mayor Steve Adler stated at a press conference Thursday morning. “That will be not solely great for them, it could be clever and sensible for the taxpayers within the city of Austin as a result of it is going to be lots inexpensive to divert someone from homelessness than to assist them find a house once they’re on our streets.”

Ad

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

Austin joins at the very least 28 U.S. cities, like Los Angeles, Chicago and Pittsburgh, that have tried some form of assured revenue. Locally, the concept came out of efforts to rework how town tackles public security within the wake of protests over police brutality in 2020.

Other Texas metro areas have experimented with assured revenue applications through the pandemic. Programs in San Antonio and El Paso County have despatched regular payments to low-income households using a combination of federal stimulus dollars and charitable contributions. Austin is believed to have the one program absolutely funded by native taxpayers.

Austin officials are figuring out how exactly this system will work and which households 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 lease, utilities, transportation and groceries.

Advert

Metropolis officers have floated some possibilities regarding who ought to qualify for assist: residents who have an eviction case filed in opposition to 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 about the relative lack of details about this system and questioned whether it was a good idea for Austin to make use of native tax dollars to fund the program, quite than letting the federal government or nonprofits take the lead.

“I consider that we do need to put money into individuals and their primary wants, however I’m not sure that this is the proper way immediately,” council member Alison Alter said at Thursday’s assembly earlier than voting in opposition to the measure.

Brion Oaks, the town’s chief fairness officer, advised city officers in a memo that the City Institute, a nonprofit assume tank based in Washington, D.C., will help measure the program’s impression by elements like members’ monetary stability, stress levels and total wellness over the course of receiving the funds.

Advert

Preliminary findings from a similar pilot program confirmed some promising outcomes. UpTogether, the California nonprofit that will run the Austin program, ran a separate assured revenue program funded by personal dollars in Austin and Georgetown that resulted in March, the nonprofit said in a statement Thursday. That program gave 173 households $1,000 a month for a year, and the nonprofit stated participants used the money for expenses like lease and mortgage funds, youngster care, gas and groceries.

Some were in a position to enhance their savings, greater than half of recipients slashed their debt by 75% and more than a 3rd eliminated their family debt, the nonprofit stated.

In line with Austin’s Ending Group Homelessness Coalition, the town has greater than 3,100 people experiencing homelessness. A local ban on most evictions throughout the pandemic kept the variety of eviction case fillings low in contrast with different major Texas cities, however that quantity has exploded for the reason that ban ended final year.

Ad

Guaranteed earnings may be one option to put a dent in those problems, proponents mentioned.

“This is about preventing displacement, stopping eviction and guaranteeing that our households are in a position to stay in their residence, that now we have that stability,” council member Vanessa Fuentes stated.

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

Help mission-driven journalism flourish in Texas. The Texas Tribune depends on reader assist to proceed delivering news that informs Texans and engages with them. Donate now to hitch as a Texas Tribune member. Plus, give month-to-month or yearly now by means of Could 5 and also you’ll help unlock a $10K match. Give and double your impact right now.

Advert

Clarification, May 6, 2022: This story has been updated to replicate that Austin is the primary Texas metropolis to use local tax dollars for a “assured income” program, and that other Texas cities have experimented with comparable programs utilizing other sorts of funding.