Guaranteed Income

United Way invest in families to build financial security and stability. Initiatives like our Guaranteed Income program focus on using United Way’s access to financial capital to redress historical inequities in our region. 

Rather than mandating social workers, conditional services or specific direction, the program creates an environment where families come together, empower themselves and are trusted to improve their lives in their own way. 

There is no time like the present for direct, unconditional and guaranteed investment in our communities. After more than a year of social isolation, spiking unemployment and financial precarity, uncertainty persists in the form of expiring eviction moratoriums, ending enhanced unemployment insurance and persistent unemployment. Even before the pandemic, a majority of Americans could not afford an unexpected $400 expense in cash.  

The Sacramento median rental apartment costs about double what would be affordable on an individual’s median income. Over the last half decade and through the pandemic, Sacramento has continued to see some of the highest increases in housing cost nationwide. According to a study by the United Ways of California, 29% of Sacramento County households make less than the “Real Cost Measure.” Households in that range spend 2-4 times more of their income on housing than households above the Real Cost Measure. These sustained and growing problems are more than just byproducts of past recessions, but central features of an inequitable economic system.

$300 every month will not end this inequity on its own. It could, however, replace a part time job or gig. It could mean more time with children, with family, and with spouses. It could mean less stress or anxiety. It does provide some measure of certainty and dignity to hardworking families.  

Guaranteed Income has gained significant national attention in the last few years, but organized efforts to address growing economic inequality through guaranteed income have existed at least as far back as the 1960s Civil Rights movements.

During the formation of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in 1966, many of the Black women founders, including chairperson Johnnie Tillmon, called for a guaranteed income.

The NWRO saw that conditional aid (e.g., benefits with work requirements) biased welfare systems against single parents, unemployed and working poor, childless couples and single adults. Similarly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for a robust guaranteed income to bring all Americans to the median income in his 1967 book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” These calls, particularly those from the NWRO, were not simply pie-in-the-sky idealism, but rather a specific solution to address the growing gaps in a rapidly expanding welfare system. Often, these gaps were explained away with the demonizing, racist logic of white supremacy and social darwinism. Today, policymakers, public commentators and economic “experts” too often use these logics to deride undervalued communities as deserving of the conditions of poverty and dismiss unconditional aid as a handout that discourages work. These conclusions have always had scant evidence. As guaranteed income demonstrations continue to build evidence that unconditional, direct investments are a key component of building a more equitable and just economic system, it is worth remembering the origin of these ideas as key Civil Rights issues.