Austin guaranteed income pilot program: Does it work?

AUSTIN, Texas - This week, the city of Austin announced its guaranteed income pilot program will be making a comeback this spring.

This comes after 135 households received $1,000 a month for a year starting in 2022 as part of a collaboration between the city and the nonprofit Up Together.

FOX 7 Austin's John Krinjak spoke with Mary Bogle, a researcher with the Urban Institute, which recently released a report about how that trial run went, and what we learned.

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JOHN KRINJAK: So I think a lot of us are wondering, how did people spend this money? What did people spend this extra money on? What did you find?

MARY BOGLE: The majority of participants spent the money on rent, and spent the majority of their money on rent. And after that, they spent it on basic needs like food, and items for their children, and then other bills, such as transportation. Some folks saved it. And they had specific reasons for saving it that were often linked to getting a better job, etc. And then there was some spending, was on, sharing with other folks in need, you know, helping out a relative who might have been behind in their rent as well.

JOHN KRINJAK: And you mentioned housing. I don't think any of us are surprised that that was kind of number one, you know, with this affordable housing crisis that we're in. How much of a help was this for people looking for a little stability in their living situation?

MARY BOGLE: We found that it was probably the biggest outcome of the study. After an increase in food stability and food security at baseline, we found that less than 50 percent of participants were caught up on rent, and well over 50 percent were concerned about being evicted or foreclosed upon within two months. During that, after receiving the cash, we saw improvements in both those measures where well over half of the participants were no longer worried about being evicted or foreclosed upon and were also caught up in their rent.

JOHN KRINJAK: I understand that you looked kind of beyond the financial impact here, and that there was an effect on people's mental health as well. What did you see here?

MARY BOGLE: We see this in pretty much all of the pilot studies, I think, and we certainly saw it for the Austin study. There's a big mental health boost almost immediately after receiving the cash, and I think this makes sense. People feel less anxious. They don't worry as much. They're not as depressed. Folks feel like, you know, they're not just worrying about survival or getting through the next rent payment, that suddenly that burden is taken off of them, and they can attend to sort of more goal-oriented things, like, how are my kids doing in school? What do I need to do to get a promotion? Or, you know, better wages? That would help me out of this situation where I can't make my rent every month.

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JOHN KRINJAK: I think a lot of people see the notion of the government giving people money. Sounds like a radical, crazy idea to a lot of people. What did this pilot program reveal about whether something like this actually makes sense here in Austin?

MARY BOGLE: Well, I think, you know, it's funny because I always think, what's so radical about thinking money helps people, right? But one of the things we found, particularly in the Austin study and our qualitative data, is that we met several people who were in such a precarious situation at the beginning of the study, when they were first getting their money, is that it wasn't in time to save them from actually losing their housing. And what we saw for those people was, is that the guaranteed income help them, but not as much as it would have helped them had it helped them to retain their housing in the first place. So I think that's a major finding from the study. And a good thing for Austin policymakers to consider is, how can cash be introduced into the lives of folks before they go homeless? And I know you have a major homelessness problem in Austin, as well as a lot of the gentrification and displacement issues that are being seen across the country, but in particular in highly desirable places to live, like Austin.