A program working to “break the cycle of homelessness for good” in the Bay Area of California has launched, and Google is backing its mission.
Google.org, the charitable arm of Google, is a funding partner for It All Adds Up (Bay Area Thriving Families Study), a pilot program that is providing 450 families in the Bay Area who have faced homelessness with guaranteed basic income for a year. Each family is given a randomized amount of either $1,000 a month for 12 months or $50 a month for 12 months, according to the program’s website. Its fellow funding partner is J-PAL North America, a regional office of the global research center Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab housed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Bay Area families that receive services from Compass Family Services or Hamilton Families and are part of their rental subsidy/rapid re-housing programs qualify for the recurring cash payments as long as they are in the final three months of their housing subsidy. These families also must not be receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
The website notes that It All Adds Up is the first program to evaluate the impact of guaranteed basic income on Bay Area families and housing stability. In addition, “more than 70% of families enrolled are headed by single moms of color with children under age five.”
“Five years ago, we committed $1 billion to help address the Bay Area’s housing shortage and a critical part of that work has been cash transfer,” said Adrian Schurr, senior regional giving lead at Google.org, per the program’s website. “There are a lot of folks nibbling at the edges of what this idea could be. Housing stipends, rental assistance. Matched savings accounts. We thought: let’s just go full force. Particularly when it comes to family homelessness — with kids actively experiencing the trauma of housing instability — there is nothing more urgent than this.”
The program’s website shared reports that guaranteed basic income reduces income volatility, alleviates financial scarcity, increases employment, enhances well-being, and boosts brain development. Using the reported impact and findings from its own pilot program, Bay Area Thriving Families aims to “develop best practices and recommendations for implementing and designing cash transfer programs to improve housing stability.”
