- A guaranteed-basic-income program in Austin gave people $1,000 a month for a year.
- Most of the participants spent the no-strings-attached cash on housing, a study found.
- Participants who said they could afford a balanced meal also increased by 17%.
A guaranteed-basic-income plan in one of Texas’ largest cities reduced rates of housing insecurity. But some Texas lawmakers are not happy.
Austin was the first city in Texas to launch a tax-payer-funded guaranteed-income program when the Austin Guaranteed Income Pilot kicked off in May 2022. The program served 135 low-income families, each receiving $1,000 monthly. Funding for 85 families came from the City of Austin, while philanthropic donations funded the other 50.
The program was billed as a means to boost people out of poverty and help them afford housing. “We know that if we trust people to make the right decisions for themselves and their families, it leads to better outcomes,” the city says on its website. “It leads to better jobs, increased savings, food security, housing security.”
While the program ended in August 2023, a new study from the Urban Institute, a Washington, DC, think tank, found that the city’s program did, in fact, help its participants pay for housing and food. On average, program participants reported spending more than half of the cash they received on housing, the report said.
I agree but some of the arguments here have a hint of truth in them such as the whole landlord thing. I think a lot of folk are wary of anything that sounds UBI related because it boils everything down to ‘one simple fix’. Programs like this work, but they’re only one piece in the puzzle such as taking housing off the market, higher taxes on the wealthy etc. I know you know this stuff. The UBI crowd takes theses studies and uses them to say ‘UBI works’ or ‘UBI can work’ even though it’s not UBI.
That’s a bit disengenuous. Of course people acknowledge that economic policy is difficult to experiment with.
People serious about UBI talk about phasing it in over a long period of time, in lieu of “experiments”. For example in Australia we already have refundable tax rebates (I’m sure everyone has these I just don’t know what they’re called), all you’d have to do would be to introduce a $1,000 refundable tax rebate and increase that by $1,000 each year until you get to a reasonable UBI. If, along the way the data showed deleterious effects then you could correct or discontinue.