Austin becomes the first Texas city to experiment with ‘guaranteed revenue’

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Austin will be the first main Texas city to use native tax dollars to provide money to low-income households to keep them housed as the cost of living skyrockets within the capital city.

Beneath a yearlong, $1 million pilot program that cleared a key Austin Metropolis Council vote Thursday, the town will send monthly checks of $1,000 to 85 needy households at risk of dropping their properties — an attempt to insulate low-income residents from Austin’s increasingly expensive housing market and prevent extra folks from turning into homeless.

“We are able to discover folks moments before they find yourself on our streets that stop them, divert them from being there,” Mayor Steve Adler stated at a press convention Thursday morning. “That will be not only wonderful for them, it would be clever and sensible for the taxpayers in the metropolis of Austin as a result of it is going to be quite a bit less expensive to divert somebody from homelessness than to assist them discover a residence as soon as they’re on our streets.”

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

Austin joins not less than 28 U.S. cities, like Los Angeles, Chicago and Pittsburgh, which have tried some form of guaranteed revenue. Locally, the thought got here out of efforts to rework how the town tackles public safety within the wake of protests over police brutality in 2020.

Other Texas metro areas have experimented with assured earnings programs through the pandemic. Programs in San Antonio and El Paso County have despatched common funds to low-income households utilizing a mix of federal stimulus dollars and charitable contributions. Austin is believed to have the one program absolutely funded by local taxpayers.

Austin officers are understanding how precisely the program will work and which households will obtain the money. Austinites who qualify gained’t have restrictions on how they will spend the cash — however the concept is that they’ll use it to pay household prices like hire, utilities, transportation and groceries.

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Metropolis officials have floated some potentialities relating to who should qualify for help: residents who've an eviction case filed against them or have trouble paying their utility payments, as well as individuals already experiencing homelessness.

Forward of Thursday’s vote, some council members voiced concerns concerning the relative lack of particulars about this system and questioned whether or not it was a good idea for Austin to use local tax dollars to fund this system, somewhat than letting the federal authorities or nonprofits take the lead.

“I imagine that we do have to spend money on people and their basic wants, but I’m undecided that that is the suitable method at this time,” council member Alison Alter said at Thursday’s meeting earlier than voting towards the measure.

Brion Oaks, the town’s chief fairness officer, advised city officials in a memo that the Urban Institute, a nonprofit assume tank based mostly in Washington, D.C., will help measure this system’s affect by looking at elements like individuals’ financial stability, stress ranges and total wellness over the course of receiving the funds.

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Preliminary findings from an analogous pilot program showed some promising outcomes. UpTogether, the California nonprofit that will run the Austin program, ran a separate assured earnings program funded by personal dollars in Austin and Georgetown that ended in March, the nonprofit mentioned in an announcement Thursday. That program gave 173 households $1,000 a month for a 12 months, and the nonprofit said individuals used the cash for expenses like lease and mortgage funds, child care, fuel and groceries.

Some have been capable of increase their financial savings, greater than half of recipients slashed their debt by 75% and greater than a third eliminated their household debt, the nonprofit mentioned.

In accordance with Austin’s Ending Neighborhood Homelessness Coalition, the town has greater than 3,100 individuals experiencing homelessness. A local ban on most evictions through the pandemic kept the number of eviction case fillings low compared with other major Texas cities, however that quantity has exploded because the ban ended final yr.

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Assured earnings could also be one solution to put a dent in these problems, proponents mentioned.

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

Disclosure: Steve Adler, a former Texas Tribune board chair, has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no function within the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete record of them here.

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Clarification, May 6, 2022: This story has been up to date to replicate that Austin is the primary Texas city to use local tax dollars for a “assured revenue” program, and that other Texas cities have experimented with similar applications utilizing other kinds of funding.