A nonprofit organization will be handing out $31,800 per person in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, with no strings attached, as it launches a guaranteed income pilot program.
In a recent interview with a local news outlet, Matt Aronson – the chair of Boston Area Youth-Cash Assistance for Stable Housing (BAY-CASH) – says the program is focused on ending homelessness for young adults, handing them $1,200 a month.
According to Aronson, though the program will start with just 15 people, it’s being created to set an example for the city.
“BAY-CASH is what we call a demonstration program. We’re trying to demonstrate to the state of Massachusetts that this kind of programming, a guaranteed-income program with supportive services, should be part of our toolkit that we use to prevent and end homelessness for young adults.
This specific program is for 24 months of cash – that’s the equivalent of $1,200 a month, two payments of $600, and a one-time drawdown of $3,000. Think first and last month’s rent, security deposit, your car breaks down, medical expense, or a crisis.”
Aronson goes on to say the guaranteed income program – which is mostly funded by private individuals and families – was created to influence state policy on the matter.
“This is about state-level policy change. We think this is something that the state has demonstrated they are capable of doing through the existing homeless youth grants…
Guaranteed income is a really old idea, the Founding Fathers and Thomas Paine wrote about it. This is an old idea that comes up every crisis, every decade or so, and it usually goes away because there are all sorts of cultural factors in the United States that tell us ‘pull [yourself] up by your bootstraps.'”
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