Pittsburgh council supports $500 monthly payments to 200 residents

Pittsburgh City Council members support a program to provide a no-strings-attached $500 monthly payment to 200 low-income residents as part of an experiment being done by dozens of cities across the country to measure the impacts of guaranteed basic income.

“This is the right thing to do at the right time,” Councilman Ricky Burgess said Wednesday, when council advanced legislation that would send $2.5 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to the nonprofit OnePGH to underwrite most of the cost of the two-year program.

Other council members supported the program, although council President Theresa Kail-Smith said OnePGH needs to be scrutinized and Councilwoman Deb Gross questioned whether the federal cash, meant to help cities weather the fiscal impacts of the covid pandemic, should be used.

American Rescue Plan Act money is also being used by Alexandria, Va., Evanston, Ill., Long Beach, Calif., and Minneapolis to fund similar programs.

Gross said she will research how those cities are doing so before the legislation comes to a final vote next week. She voted against it during Wednesday’s committee meeting.

The Peduto administration sent the proposal to council last week and it has generated a lot of interest from constituents, Kail-Smith said.

“I am getting a lot of phone calls about it,” she said.

Some people are upset the program is geared toward helping one segment of the population, low-income Black women. Others have asked Kail-Smith how they can sign up to be included in it.

RELATED: Experimental program will provide $500 per month to 200 Pittsburgh residents

It is called OnePGH’s Assured Cash Experiment program and will be managed by Michele Abbott, a former policy researcher for the RAND Corp. Abbott is OnePGH’s first hire.

The nonprofit was created in April by the Peduto administration to oversee contributions from the city’s nonprofit sector.

OnePGH will use the $2.5 million in funding to bolster $600,000 in grants from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to fund the cost of the $3.1 million program.

Half of the 200 participants in the program will be low-income Black woman. That segment of the city’s population was spotlighted in a 2019 report released by the city’s Gender Equity Commission, which found they face stark inequities in health, income, employment and education when compared to other segments of Pittsburgh’s population.

The guaranteed basic income program is an attempt to change that, Peduto’s deputy Chief of Staff Lindsay Powell told council.

Providing the monthly cash payments coupled with guidance from the Pittsburgh Financial Empowerment Center is being tested to see if it may be the “silver bullet” to improve the lives of Black women, said Oliver Beasley, a policy analyst for the city’s Office of Equity.

Residents themselves can’t apply to be a part of the program, Beasley said.

Instead, the Black women who will participate will be selected from the Financial Empowerment Center’s clientele. The center provides financial counseling to low-income residents.

The other 100 participants will be randomly selected from low-income areas of the city with no demographic restrictions.

A control group of 200 other people will also be selected. They won’t receive the cash payments, but will be monitored during the two years, Beasley said.

The idea is to gather data about the participants to see if guaranteed basic income is effective, Beasley said.

“It’s a really good start,” Councilwoman Erika Strassburger said.

It could help dispel the image of the “welfare queen” that was used in politics of the 1980s Reagan era that resulted in cuts to social service programs, Strassburger said.

She called the portrayal of people gaming the system to take advantage of government assistance a “very racist and very dangerous sentiment.”

The results of the two-year program will be analyzed by the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Research.

The school is partnering with Mayors for a Guaranteed Income to research the programs to determine if city-led programs could be expanded on a state or federal level.

Participants will be monitored and their spending will be anonymously tracked to gather data that will show how it is being used.

The idea is to give people the power to make their own financial decisions. Other assistance programs providing funding for food, childcare or health care, but sometimes people need to spend money on a new washing machine or to pay for a car repair, Powell said.

“If Pittsburgh can be part of the process to get a federal program, it’s worth it,” Strassburger said. “We need social safety nets.”