Episode Transcript
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Patrons & Partnerships.
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I'm Tina, and today our guest is Kevin Scott, the Director of Just Income GNV.
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[music]
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So I would like to introduce our guest today. It’s Kevin Scott,
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Director of… I'll let you introduce yourself.
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My official title is I'm the Project Director of Just Income GNV.
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So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and Just Income
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and how you started with the organization?
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Yeah, so Just Income GNV - GNV as the Gainesville city code,
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we know that here, but if anyone's listening doesn't know that.
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So Just Income GNV is a project that is being administered
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by Community Spring. And so Community Spring is a nonprofit here in Gainesville
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that tries to address systemic poverty through economic mobility,
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which sounds like a mouthful, but the way that actually like
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comes out in practice is Community Spring hires people in the community
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who have experienced poverty in some way,
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or maybe even still are experiencing poverty, to address the systems
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that they see as contributing to their own experience.
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So it's very much modeled on the idea of closest to the pain, closest to the solution.
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The people who are living it should be the ones who are speaking up
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and attacking those systems that have been contributing
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to their own experience, so. I was actually part of the first fellowship class
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that they ever had, and what we worked on as part of that fellowship,
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based on our own common experience - we'd all been impacted
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by the justice system in some way in our lives, either directly or indirectly -
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and so what we saw here in Gainesville that was lacking was re-entry support.
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So people go into incarceration, they come out… Now what?
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Now what are you supposed to do? And what we saw here was like,
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really not much in terms of meaningful resources for people coming out.
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We thought, you know, having like a peer-to-peer network
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could be something very powerful in terms of like,
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somebody who's been in prison, for example, is best suited to empathize
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and share resources with somebody who's coming out of prison also.
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So kind of like pairing that lived experience with other lived experience.
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And so what we started doing was kind of providing like,
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practical resources, emotional resources for people post-incarceration
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is really what it was, which was great.
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And it was called Torchlighters Re-Entry Support.
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That's what we were doing. And we started corresponding with people
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while they were still in prison. Oftentimes, people come out, no networking,
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nothing has been sort of like, maybe like no connection to the outside world.
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It's sort of like your re-entry plan starts the day you come out,
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when really it should start the day you go in. So realizing that cycle -
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we've experienced this in our own lives, some of us,
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and then in the lives of our loved ones and around us -
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so we wanted to interrupt that cycle.
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And so we started corresponding with people in advance,
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people that were coming home to Alachua County from state prison,
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that was our main audience, our main focus, which was very helpful.
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People knew that we existed here. We were sending in
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some resource guides as well, like we had sort of compiled
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and consolidated local resources. Like, here's where you go to get an ID;
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here are places where you can go get food, clothing,
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and sort of categorize those things and made them into
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a nice tidy little package for people coming out.
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When COVID happened - you may have heard of COVID -
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we had to [laughs] pause a lot of our activities and the gatherings
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we were kind of having. We had just started having face-to-face meetings,
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like group meetings, sort of like a support group - come together,
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share some tears, share some laughter, share some resources.
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COVID really put a wrench into that whole system.
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So we still wanted to do something to help our community,
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we felt like we had a lot of momentum and we wanted to keep doing something.
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We had become aware of the merit and power of direct cash assistance programs.
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And so we wanted to do one here. And so we did what was called CS Direct,
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which is Community Spring Direct. And it was just a one time $300 payment
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to folks who were receiving SNAP benefits here in Alachua County.
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So the way that we did that was folks could apply through an online portal,
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you know, had to verify that they were receiving SNAP benefits,
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and then we would do monthly just a randomized total like lottery draw.
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And so whatever amount of money we had raised, we would divide that by $300.
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And we would give that money to that many randomly selected people.
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That was great, very exciting to be a part of.
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Around that time, our mayor, Mayor Poe, joined Mayors For A Guaranteed Income,
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which is a national coalition of mayors who believe that guaranteed income
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is just a good idea and worth exploring, at the very least.
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And so he had heard about our direct cash assistance program,
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and he came to Community Spring and said, would you be interested
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in implementing a guaranteed income pilot here in Gainesville?
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Everything that is done at Community Spring, it centers impacted voices.
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So like, we want to hear from people in the community,
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people who have been through the experiences of,
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of what we're trying to address. So after a lot of thoughtful discussion of like,
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could we do this? Should we do this? Is this a horrible idea?
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Is this a great idea? Like we, you know, had a lot of discussion.
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And we came back and said, Yes, we will do it, but only if
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it's for formerly incarcerated people based on our previous work.
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And they said, Yes, okay, let's do it.
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And so that has turned into Just Income GNV.
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So that's like, kind of the perfect synergy of our re-entry support work,
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the direct cash assistance work, kind of came together into this current project now.
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So how many people are being assisted with your program at this time?
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So, very exciting, just last Thursday - March 31st -
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we officially have 115 people receiving income for a year.
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Tina: That's amazing.
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So we had 50 - 57 started in January.
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And then the next 58 started March 31st, just last Thursday, for a total of 115.
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And so the cadence of those payments, the way it works out,
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is they get $1,000 the first month, followed by 600 a month
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for 11 months after that. And it is unconditional, it is no strings attached.
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If you want to buy a sandwich, you want to buy a jetski, you want to save it,
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you want to light it on fire, [laughing] you want to pay your bills,
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it's totally no strings, which we think is important.
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Oftentimes, support comes with like, maybe a caveat or like a hook or like,
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hey but you can only use it for - or some sort of condition.
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And we believe that people are the experts in their own lives
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and should be able to act accordingly. So we thought that part was like,
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super crucial. And we've already seen some results. The first cohort,
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like I said, started in January. So they are three months into it already.
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And we've seen like incredible things - even the people
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that just got it last Thursday, already seen like amazing stories.
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And to the people - the 151?
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Kevin: 115.
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115. Are they also invited to participate in decision making or discussions?
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Are they part of that group that then decides how to help others, or.. ?
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Yes, so what we're doing, it's a research study.
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So we're part of the Mayors For A Guaranteed Income national network.
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So this is going to be a very deep dive. This is a very serious like, academic study.
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So we're partnered with the University of Pennsylvania
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and the Center for Guaranteed Income Research and Dr. Lucius Couloute -
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best name on the planet. He's a doctor at Suffolk University up in Boston area,
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and he is a criminology and sociology professor.
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And so in conjunction with UPenn, Dr. Couloute, they’ll be conducting
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a pretty deep dive, quantitative and qualitative data of people
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receiving the money and people not receiving the money.
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So the way that we logistically did this, is we opened up an application
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to people that we knew were eligible. So the criteria worth stating is
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you had to be released from a state or federal prison, county jail with a felony,
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or started felony probation within six months of the application deadline.
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We tried to have like, as close of a window to release as possible.
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So we reached out to those people, said, Hey, you're eligible for this thing.
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A lot of skepticism, which we can very much talk about.
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Very, you know, understandable skepticism. But people applied,
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and then it was a lottery draw. It was a random selection from that point forward.
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So there's, you know, the treatment and control group,
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people getting the money, people not getting the money. And so six months, 12 months, 18 months, folks will be invited -
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totally optional - to take part in surveys, similar to the baseline survey,
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which was - kind of served as the application as well. Just to see,
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like, how are things going? How is this income? Has it helped? Has it hurt?
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In what ways has it had an impact? And then also, how's it going for people
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who have not had financial support, you know, an income floor that they can count on?
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So we'll be doing, you know, a lot of research as well.
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So people's voices, we want them to say, yes, we will participate in the research.
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And so of the 115 people who are receiving the income,
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we met each one of them individually, had private meetings,
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got to know them - which we think was very important.
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We wanted to have like, face to face. This is not just a transaction.
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This is community. This is power building. This is like,
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a bold move to do this with this population especially.
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So we thought it was important to like kind of build that rapport.
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And 100%, 100% of those 115 people said yes, I would absolutely love
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to be a part of the research. Everyone said they're willing to participate.
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Totally optional. They're gonna get the money either way,
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so they could say never contact me again. But like 100% said yes.
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So I think people - what we hear a lot from formerly incarcerated people,
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especially is I've been silenced so long, I was afraid to speak up
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for fear of retaliation, but what they did to me in there is… fill in the blank,
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you know, there's any number of atrocities and traumas
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that people come out with. So a lot of people are now feeling
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almost a little eager to like, share their story, which is amazing
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and realizing that this could really help the next person coming out as well.
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So can you tell us about your team? Like you must -
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you're not doing this by yourself. What does your team look like?
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Yeah, so I'm the director. And then Tequila McKnight
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is the participant coordinator. She was also one of the original fellows
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who helped to form Torchlighters Re-Entry Support.
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Tequila and I were a part of a group, several group gatherings of people
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that helped to design and administer this. So ours is very unique
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in that it's like, it has been designed and administered
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by formerly incarcerated people, that's very distinct.
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And so like, even the fact that we front loaded the payments,
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like the fact that it's $1,000 first and then 600 is unusual.
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A lot of guaranteed income studies or pilots are one uniform amount
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throughout the entire time. We thought that that was important,
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just based on our own experience, like you know, cash is the currency of urgency.
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You can get as much as you can when you come out, especially,
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and so that was designed by us. Community Spring is the nonprofit
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that we're operating out of. So like that's our umbrella nonprofits.
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And then we're in partnership with Mayors For A Guaranteed Income.
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UPenn has research staff there, and then Dr. Couloute as well. It's small.
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I mean, it's a small operation, honestly - our office here,
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Tina: Mhmm.
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it's just me and Tequila are the, are the two staff members
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who've been hired on to do it. But then we're fortunate
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to have the connections with the other entities as well.
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So what happens at the end of the period of time?
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Will your team then still assist the participants into the next phase of their lives
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by connecting them to resources or anything else? Is -
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what, what happens to them at the end of the program?
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I have no idea. Tina: [laughs] We don't know. [laughs] I mean, part of it is like, we shall see.
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So I - resources, absolutely. So everyone that is a part of this,
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like I mentioned earlier, we had compiled that resource guide,
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that was this sort of like a trifold pamphlet that we would send into people in prison.
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We also made a longer form like an insider's guide to re-entry.
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And that was written by former prisoners with like quotes and anecdotes and advice.
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It was a mix of prose and categorized resources as well.
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So everyone that came in, they got one of those. And so resources for sure.
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But part of this is it's a study, it's research. We don't know, like,
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we're hopeful that this will be a net positive thing.
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But we also want to operate from a place of wisdom and realities.
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So part of it is we're going to kind of wait and see. If you asked me today, like,
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Will this be good? I would say yes, just because like I said,
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the first 57 people are three months into it, already seen remarkable
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tangible and intangible results. You know, people have come back with some
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like really amazing stuff, people that like didn't have a vehicle now have a vehicle.
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They were able to - if they had like maybe fines and fees that they had to pay
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to like get their license squared away, or like get, you know,
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like a tag that they couldn't afford before, now they have it.
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One guy had had some botched hip surgeries while he was incarcerated
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and has a hard time getting around, very limiting in terms like the scope of his life,
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like where he can go. He was able to get a mobility scooter. He found one at like -
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at a hospice, I think. Thrift store. So, amazing, like he was able to afford that.
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People that were houseless now in homes, people investing in their education.
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You know, one of the things that we combat a lot, especially with this population,
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is there's a perceived stereotype. That's a big, a big hurdle for us,
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is that people think of someone who's been incarcerated as like, dangerous,
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maybe lazy, like, they're not gonna do anything with the money,
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they're just gonna sit around, they're just gonna drink it or smoke
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or whatever it may be. And like, what we know from like
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other pilots around the country is like, that's actually decidedly not,
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that's just not true. The evidence says the opposite.
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So people who received the money in - Stockton, California had a very large,
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pretty robust study, and their findings have already come out.
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People were twice as likely to get full time employment
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that were receiving the money, like two times as likely,
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because they could afford to take the time to go explore other opportunities.
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I think it was like 1 to 2% went to alcohol, which is totally contrary
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to what most people would believe. So, you know, with our population that we're serving here,
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we feel like we have some extra stuff, some icky stuff to get around
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just because people tend to like, demonize people who've been incarcerated.
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But what we have seen is people do exactly what kinda you and I
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would do and what anyone else would do, for the most part, is they invest in themselves and make choices
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that are relevant to themselves, their families.
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Tina: Try to get their life back on track.
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Yeah, yeah, just - just make common choices. Like I'm hungry,
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I'm going to go get some food. Or like, I have an opportunity to go -
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like, I've been stuck in some shitty job. I can now afford to take a day off
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from my shitty job to go explore this other opportunity
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that otherwise I couldn't afford to miss a day of work now that I have this cushion.
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So the grand total is $7,600 a year. So for people who might criticize and say,
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Oh, well, they're, they're not going to do anything. I mean,
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could you live on $7,600 a year? If so, please,
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enlighten all of us on how you're doing that. It's not enough to live on.
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This is only providing like, a guaranteed cushion. So there's - “income floor”
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is kind of like a buzz phrase in the world of guaranteed income.
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And what we see in this population in particular is it's not like
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you come out of incarceration and you are on a level playing field,
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on even ground with the rest. Like, you come out in the hole. So like,
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you have the same expectations as everyone else of like, you know,
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you need to find housing. You're probably going to have to get some transportation
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of some sort, maybe a bicycle, maybe - maybe even just a bus pass, a car.
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Insurance, utilities, a phone, some clothing, I mean -
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just, you know, the things that we all have to pay for.
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However, on top of that, you also have court fees, restitution, maybe probation fees,
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maybe you have to wear an ankle monitor, maybe you have to take
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some sort of therapy, maybe there's drug testing. All of these things are extra.
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So you have an extraordinary amount of debt, more so than the next person.
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And you have like a diminished opportunity to make money.
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So like, it's hard to find a job. It's hard to find housing.
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People come out really on fire and to be back in the world
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and like very ambitious and driven, creative, very capable human beings,
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and then go for a job interview and it's like, oh, sorry. Background check, you know,
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can't help you. Can't live here. Can’t work here. No, no, no, no, no.
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So the inability to pay those legal fees can result in re-incarnation.
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I know here locally, it's about like 25% of the technical probation violations
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are rooted in just simply a lack of money. Like, there's no crime, there's no offense -
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the crime is your bank account. You just don't have enough money.
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You're too poor to be free. Which is an insane situation to be in,
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but it happens all the time. So people will be re-incarcerated simply for a lack of money.
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So that's one of the things we're trying to highlight with this as well
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is that if money turns out to be the answer, then maybe money
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was the problem to begin with. Maybe the way that we're taxing people
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and expecting people to do extraordinary things with limited resources is a trap.
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Maybe - maybe it's rigged after all.
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[music]
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Thanks for listening to Patrons & Partnerships.
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The second half of our interview with Just Income GNV will post on August 11th.
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As always, if you know of an individual or organization
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you’d like to recommend for an interview, email us at [email protected].
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To listen to more episodes, find us anywhere you listen to podcasts.
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