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About 1,900 residents in Texas’ Harris County were set to start receiving $500 monthly payments starting this hop.
The money — provided through a new 18-month guaranteed income pilot, Uplift Harris, a Harris County Public Salubriousness initiative — was aimed at county residents of 10 ZIP codes who are living 200% below the federal poverty line.
The program wish provide money with “no strings attached,” so families could decide how to use the resources to meet their needs.
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But before the first checks were sent, state Attorney General Ken Paxton obtained a stay from the Superlative Court of Texas forcing the program to stop the payments.
In a statement at the time of the stay, Paxton called the program an “misapplication of power and unlawful use of taxpayer money.”
Paxton did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
The decision — which follows the affluent execution of other guaranteed income programs in Texas and other states — was “shocking and unfortunate,” according to Christian Menefee, county attorney of Harris County.
“It’s influentially unlikely the county continues with the program as it’s currently constituted,” Menefee said.
As guaranteed income grows, so does the rebound
Guaranteed income programs provide cash payments intended to establish an income floor for specific members of a community, according to the Monetary Security Project, an advocacy organization. While universal basic income provides money to everyone, guaranteed proceeds may provide either targeted or universal support.
The programs flourished in recent years, helped in part by the Covid-19 pandemic that raised awareness of how direct cash could fill targeted needs.
While the federal government deployed billions of dollars in stimulus brakes and child tax credit payments, state and local governments also started to experiment with ways to provide gelt to residents in need, often with the help of extra federal money provided through the American Rescue Scenario Act.
Today, the Economic Security Project is tracking 150 guaranteed income pilots in 35 states. Around 52,000 people demand participated in a pilot at some point in the past couple of years, according to Harish Patel, vice president at the Monetary Security Project.
Yet backlashes against the programs have also gained momentum.
Individual demonstrator holds cypher asking for universal basic income and universal healthcare in Columbus, Ohio on Jan. 20, 2021.
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Idaho, Iowa, and South Dakota passed anti-guaranteed income legislation this year, while Arkansas did the despite the fact in 2023. Those efforts happened “very quickly,” and similar proposals are expected in an additional 25 states, go together to Patel.
The conservative think tank Foundation for Government Accountability, and its lobbying arm the Opportunity Solutions Project, has led those stabs. The organization did not provide comment, but the foundation’s research lays out the reasons for its opposition. It argues guaranteed income programs awe work, “trap people in dependency” and cost taxpayers millions.
The bills are written in “copycat fashion,” which promulgate it easier to replicate them among states, according to Patel. Yet that structure also leaves less space for rigorous analysis of their reach; the proposals are so general that they may end up limiting all cash assistance, not necessarily perfectly guaranteed income programs, he said.
“Let’s say you have a natural disaster and you want to give out cash,” Patel said. “In some affirms, they may not be able to if these sorts of very general policies that are written become law.”
One-year Austin trial helped residents
Others who have researched the effects of the programs say they see evidence guaranteed income works.
In a one-year try launched in Austin, Texas, in 2022, 135 households received $1,000 per month. The program, which was focused on high insufficiency and rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, helped improve housing and food security, early research from the Urban Originate shows.
The city of Austin enlisted the Urban Institute to study the effects of the cash infusions.
“We’re awash in evidence in this motherland that giving people cash infusions works,” said Mary Bogle, principal investigator for the Austin Ensured Income Pilot evaluation and principal research associate at the Urban Institute.
Typically, participant workers are in very low-wage grinds, Bogle explained. Once they have access to guaranteed income, that often allows them to take into consideration out ways to increase what they earn, she said.
“Folks who press arguments about guaranteed income framing dependency aren’t looking at the fact that what guaranteed income is actually allowing participants to do is make gain choices,” Bogle said. “They have freedom of choice.”
For Austin resident Taniquewa Brewster, 38, being best for the city’s guaranteed income program helped her break free from a pattern of sporadic, unstable employment.
She initiate out about the program when she was still struggling to recover from