Andrea Thomas: It’s time for DC to move beyond pilot programs and ensure guaranteed income for all
Two DC-funded pilot programs are boosting the incomes of local families and hold great promise to improve economic security in the District. In fact, the positive impacts of guaranteed income are so clear that the District should start working now to expand the best features of the pilots to all DC families with low incomes, rather than limiting the benefits to a few hundred families.
The pilot programs — Strong Families, Strong Futures (SFSF) and Career Map — each provide more than $10,000 annually and other benefits to families with low incomes, with no strings attached. This added income is critical, given that nearly one-fourth of DC children are in families with below-poverty income — less than $25,000 for a family of three.
We know that guaranteed income works. It has been shown to improve school outcomes for children, reduce food insecurity, help parents find better jobs, and ease the severe mental stresses of poverty. Some participants of a program in Stockton, California, that provided $500 a month reported that it was the first time in their life they didn’t run out of food at the end of the month. The Stockton program also led to increases in employment, presumably because the added cash offered flexibility to prepare for and look for a better job – rebutting the argument that income assistance leads people to work less.
At a time when the District faces troubling levels of gun violence, with leaders focusing their response on tougher crime enforcement, it’s important to remember that improving household and community economic security — thereby reducing the material deprivation and stress of deep poverty — is critical to creating safer communities. The same DC Council that voted in July to increase crime penalties had in May turned down an opportunity in the DC budget to increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and create a substantial child tax credit.
Guaranteed income programs run up against a serious long-running challenge facing all cash assistance programs: the so-called “benefits cliff.” Increases in income for people with low incomes, whether from earnings or public programs, can result in sharp reductions on other public benefits, such as SNAP food benefits. In some cases, this can mean losing more than half of the income gain due to offsetting reductions in benefits. Under DC’s main cash assistance program for families with children, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), benefits start to phase out when a parent earns $160 a month, and are eliminated entirely for a family of three when a parent earns $2,100 a month (about 30 hours weekly at the minimum wage).
There are several ways this benefits cliff issue can be mitigated. Career Map provides its aid in the form of paying down a family’s rent rather than providing cash; the rent payment is not counted as income in other programs. In contrast, SFSF is a cash program that allows recipients to collect benefits either monthly, which would result in other public benefits declining, or as an annual lump sum, in which case it doesn’t count against public benefits.
Unfortunately, the proven benefits of guaranteed income are reaching only a small fraction of DC families with low incomes due to limited DC government funding. SFSF has 232 participants this year and next, and there are 600 families in Career Map — which falls far short of the need, given that there are 15,000 families with children in TANF. Transforming the small-scale successes of these pilot programs into lasting gains for the thousands of District families in need requires a commitment from DC’s leaders to broadly apply the lessons learned, such as through modifying TANF or creating an alternative to it.
Indeed, given the clear benefits of these pilots, the District should take steps now to expand guaranteed basic income beyond the pilots and minimize the impact of added income on other public benefits families receive. There are many ways to do that, but improving TANF may be the most feasible option, given that it is the main cash program for families. First and foremost, the District ought to increase TANF benefits — the maximum monthly amount is just $696 for a family of three, and most TANF participants do not get any subsidized housing assistance.
The District also could alter rules when parents start a new job so that benefits would drop gradually after a grace period with no reductions. Beyond that, DC should allow families to choose to receive a portion of their TANF support as an offset to other expenses, such as rent or utilities, rather than as a cash payment, to limit the reductions of other benefits. Additional steps — such as reducing co-pays in its subsidized child care program or adding a supplement to federal SNAP food benefits — would help DC prevent or reduce other public benefit cuts when a parent earns more. These recommendations will require DC policymakers to identify new funding and may need to be implemented over multiple years, but the wide-ranging benefits of having more economically stable families make it a critical goal. All of DC will gain when families have enough resources to meet their basic needs and reach their potential.
It’s great that DC is exploring guaranteed basic income, but the real cheering should come when our elected leaders adopt policies to ensure a guaranteed basic income for everyone.
Andrea Thomas is president and CEO of United Planning Organization, DC’s Community Action Agency. UPO provides services to support the economic security of residents with low incomes, and it advocates for systemic policy changes to address the causes of poverty.
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