- An Atlanta-area program offers low-income black women $850 a month for two years.
- Participants say this allowed them to pay off their debts and gain financial security.
- Conservatives are suing to block a similar program for black mothers in San Francisco.
A Georgia program offering monthly payments to low-income black women hopes it will help them escape poverty. The evidence indicates that it works.
The Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund in Atlanta provides young black women with average payments of $850 per month through its In Her Hands program. The program is one of several guaranteed income programs nationwide aimed at helping people meet their basic needs.
The program, launching in 2022, provides payments to 650 women over two years. The program began with participants from Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, where Martin Luther King Jr. grew up and later spoke out in favor of basic income, according to the GRO Fund.
An initial report on the program’s effectiveness found that it helped many of its participants reduce their debts, according to the nonprofit news site Capital and Main.
According to the media outlet, 45% of program participants said they used the money to catch up on paying their bills. Nearly 30% of participants surveyed said they now had funds for “rainy days” after enrolling in the program, and 27% said they had paid off their debts.
C. Harper, one of the beneficiaries, told Georgia Public Radio that she struggled to pay her rent when she signed up for the program in 2022. After joining the program, she said that she had found permanent housing for herself and her children and used the money to help. obtain a teaching certificate.
“The end result was I was able to get a better job,” Harper told GPR.
GRO Fund executive director Hope Wollensack told the outlet she hopes the positive results “not just in the short term, but in the long term” will be used to inform other initiatives.
Basic income programs for black women face legal challenges
The In Her Hands program is not the first guaranteed income program targeting black women.
A San Francisco-area program — called the Abundant Birth Project, which provides pregnant Black women with $1,000 monthly payments for a year — received a $5 million grant from the state in December 2022 after showing positive results.
Research shows that black women experience the highest infant and maternal mortality rates among all populations, in part because of wealth and income disparities, the city said in a statement.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the program helps ease the financial burden on mothers so they can prioritize their mental health, which “ultimately impacts the health of their children.” babies and their families.
Despite reports of success, basic income programs across the country often face resistance from conservatives. Programs like those in Georgia and San Francisco that provide payments specifically to black women also face legal challenges.
The American Civil Rights Project, a conservative public interest corporation, sued the city of San Francisco in November 2023 to shut down the Abundant Birth Project. The lawsuit contends the program is discriminatory and uses public money to make payments based on illegal classifications, such as race.
The complaint claims that guaranteed basic income programs are unconstitutional because they are mostly “government-sponsored and funded programs designed to select beneficiaries on a basis of racial exclusion.” The lawsuit accuses San Francisco’s program of “selecting recipients of public funds on the basis of race,” which is discriminatory.
A representative for San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu told the Bay Area Reporter that the city denies the programs are unconstitutional or illegal.
“We look forward to further discussing these issues in court,” Chui’s office told the outlet.
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