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Harris County could become the latest region in the country to launch a guaranteed income pilot program, providing $500 per month for 18 months to 1,500 low-income families.
Beginning as soon as fall 2023, the county would use $20.5 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to the program, if approved by Harris County Commissioners Court on Tuesday.
MORE ON POVERTY: Eight percent of Harris County residents live in areas of persistent poverty, census data shows
More than 45 cities and counties have implemented similar programs providing families with direct cash payments — including Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis — and many of them launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, fueled by ARPA funding.
In Chicago and Minneapolis, families received $500 per month, while Los Angeles and Austin have sent residents in the program $1,000 each month.
Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis and County Judge Lina Hidalgo announced the program, which they’re calling Uplift Harris, while visiting a new mural in downtown Houston dedicated to essential workers.
“Unchecked and ongoing inequality has created an economic divide that families can’t overcome on their own,” Ellis said. “And Harris County has an obligation to act.”
In other communities, critics have said these programs are too expensive and reward people for staying out of the workforce. Some economists and nonprofit organizations that study economic programs say that these pilot projects can’t be scaled up easily or in a way that wouldn’t overburden the economy. Some of these organizations say a better solution is expanding and overhauling existing federal programs, like the child tax credit.
The idea of guaranteed income isn’t new, Ellis said, pointing out that Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for the policy over 50 years ago.
“In the last years of Dr. King’s life, he called for a guaranteed income program to end poverty and make real this country’s promise of freedom, equality and justice for everybody,” Ellis said. “Despite our region’s vast prosperity in Harris County, we’re also facing rampant wealth income inequality. Decades of neglect, inequality and discrimination have financially destabilized generations of Harris County families.”
One in 12 Harris County residents lives in an area with persistent poverty, according to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Black and Hispanic Harris County residents were more likely to live in persistent poverty areas — the new data show 63 percent of Harris County residents living in persistent poverty areas are Hispanic, though 43 percent of the overall population is Hispanic. While non-Hispanic Black residents make up 19 percent of the county population, they account for 26 percent of the population in areas with persistent poverty.
Uplift Harris would specifically target households in those neighborhoods experiencing persistent poverty.
Survey results published last month by Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research showed 63 percent of respondents thought “too little is being spent on programs and services to support individuals and families experiencing poverty.”
The goal of the guaranteed income program is to help households pay for basic needs like rent, groceries, transportation, housing and utilities.
“Nearly one in two residents in Harris County cannot afford a $400 emergency,” Hidalgo said, citing the Kinder Institute survey. “The level of poverty that we’re seeing in an economy as large and as robust as ours should be a call to action.”
To be eligible for Uplift Harris, families must live below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, which means around $60,000 for a family of four or $29,000 for an individual.
Families randomly selected for the pilot program must either live in high-poverty zip codes or participate in Harris County Public Health’s ACCESS program.
Some of those neighborhoods include Sunnyside, Gulfton and Galena Park.
MORE ON HEALTH: Harris County Public Health program aims to be one-stop shop for helping vulnerable communities
If approved Tuesday, the program would be run by the county’s public health department, administered by an outside organization and evaluated by third-party researchers.
The $500 per month payment would not have strings attached to restrict how it can be used, empowering recipients to use the money to meet their most pressing needs, Hidalgo said.
“The recipients would have full discretion to spend the funds on whatever they or their family needs most,” Hidalgo said. “The extra money can mean not having to choose between being hungry or sitting in the dark.”
jen.rice@houstonchronicle.com
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