New York City housing advocates and tenants march to demand Gov. Andrew Cuomo cancel rent amid the pandemic on Oct. 10, 2020.
Andrew Lichtenstein | Corbis News | Getty Images
The new federal coronavirus relief bill that’s poised to be approved on Capitol Hill could put unprecedented sums of money into the hands of American families.
That includes new stimulus checks of up to $1,400 for adults and their dependents, as well as up to $300 per month per child through an enhanced child tax credit.
This week, some Democratic senators upped the ante, and called for recurring stimulus checks and indefinite expansion of unemployment benefits for the duration of the pandemic.
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To some experts, the move shows the idea of guaranteed income, where a certain floor of money is provided to a targeted set of people, could be gaining momentum in the U.S.
The idea of direct checks to Americans has become more popular. Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang brought national attention to the concept when he proposed direct payments to individuals on the debate stage in 2019.
Around that time, cities like Jackson, Mississippi, and Stockton, California, started running tests to see exactly how these kinds of programs could work.
Now, even more places are embracing the concept, with 42 cities having signed on to Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a program that helps them to follow Stockton’s lead and run their own pilots.
Those developments come as the coronavirus has further exposed the economy’s flaws, particularly with regard to income inequality, according to Amy Castro Baker, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice. She is also working as a co-principal investigator of the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, or SEED.
“It has pulled the curtain back on the fact that most communities and most households, especially working-class households, have not recovered from the wealth loss of the Great Recession,” Baker said.
Now, the pandemic has exacerbated that situation for a lot of individuals and families. The Pew Research Center recently found that 1 in 10 Americans say they will never recover from the current crisis.
“Something is broken,” Baker said.
‘Give families the support that they need’
Aisha Nyandoro, founder of Magnolia Mother’s Trust
D’Artagnan Winford
Springboard to Opportunities, a Jackson, Mississippi-based organization that helps connect families who live in affordable housing to resources to help improve their lives, has witnessed the devastation Covid-19 has brought on the community.
“It’s going to take years, if not a generation, for families to get back to that foothold that they had,” said Aisha Nyandoro, CEO of…
Read More: U.S experiments with guaranteed income