I think sometimes people make the assumption that if someone is unhoused, there's nothing in common with someone who's housed. And that's a real misnomer because I feel like we're all, ultimately one paycheck away from being unhoused - Jen Roy

In this episode, our featured voices are the Founder and CEO of Miracle Messages, Kevin Adler, Miracle Messages Friend Program volunteer Jen Roy along with Miracle Money Program participant Ray.
The pandemic has exposed how fragile the economic health is of most American households especially our black and brown households. City of Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs was the first government leader to believe in his community members and created a privately funded universal basic income pilot called the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration. The data from the 2019 pilot showed that providing residents $500 per month that they spent on food, rent, utilities and car repairs for example helped stabilize their households. For more background on Mayor Tubbs and the pilot please listen to Episode 12 from our documentary series "Stockton’s Rise From Bankruptcy".

Mayor Tubbs has gone on to create the "Mayors for Guaranteed Income" program with Mayors from California to Georgia signing on to the program. Since Tubb’s Stockton experiment, Oakland, Marin County, San Francisco, and Santa Clara County started one to two-year universal basic income programs. The pilot programs provide participants between $500 to $1,000 guaranteed dollars every month with no strings attached. Most of these initial pilots like Tubbs’s Stockton pilot are being funded by private donations. On July 15th California lawmakers approved the nation's first state-funded guaranteed income program that once Governor Newsom signs the bill cities and counties can apply for funding to support a current pilot or a new program from the $35 million dollar fund.

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