A county in California just launched a guaranteed income program to help low-income Black and Native American families.
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the Family First Sacramento pilot program on Tuesday.
The program, which launches this July, will allocate a basic income of $725 to eligible African American and Native-American families with children up to age 5 in the Valley High, Florin, North Sacramento, Del Paso Heights, Arden Arcade areas, as well as the Wilton Rancheria tribe.
“These are families that are living within high rates of poverty across all the zip codes,” Michelle Callejas, director of the Department of Child, Family and Adult Services with Sacramento County, said. “In this case, African American and Native American children zero to five and their families are most disproportionately impacted by the child welfare system.”
The state of California and a nonprofit fund the program, which Callejas said is meant to promote family stability and self-sufficiency.
Guaranteed income programs are nothing new in the U.S. Several cities and localities have adopted such programs to help families living in poverty. Unlike basic income programs which allocations a set amount of cash to people regardless of their income, guaranteed income programs address income inequality and redistribute wealth to those in need.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a proponent of guaranteed income, arguing that racial income disparities required the establishment of an economic floor for Black people living in poverty.
The cash most of these programs offer is only for a limited time and it’s only intended to fill gaps not covered by other social safety benefits. The payments often cover bills, debt repayment, childcare, or other expenses.
“This is not a new type of thing. It has been shown to work over and over again, there are 150, or more of these programs going on right now,” Dr. Steve Wirtz, a Development Psychologist and Commissioner with First 5 Sacramento, said. “Investing in children early is the best bet we can make, and it pays off for all of us. Not just in terms of the government, but in terms of you and I not experiencing the problems of homelessness on the streets or crime.”
One of the biggest guaranteed income experiments in the country was launched in Atlanta, Georgia in 2022. The “In Her Hands” program enrolled 650 Black women in three Georgia communities who either received $850 per month for two years or an upfront payment of $4,300, followed by $700 monthly payments. One of the communities the program targeted was Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward district where Census data showed 37 percent of Black children lived in poverty and no white children did.
Some critics argue that these programs aren’t the ultimate solution to remedy income inequality. Rather, they’re just a temporary fix to a longstanding issue. Many opponents believe recipients could depend on the payments as cushions to their financial hardships instead of using them for the short term while they work to advance their education or career.
In Sacramento County, officials plan to analyze data from their pilot program and track who gets the payments, how they spend the money, and the best ways to refine the project as it progresses.
The median household income in Sacramento County was $84,010, according to 2023 Census data. A little more than 12 percent of the population is living in poverty.
