1,000 Angelenos could start receiving $ 1,000 a month with the county's basic income program

The initiative, which is voted on next Tuesday, would send the money for three years and is similar to other pilot projects that have developed in cities like Stockton and Compton

Photo: PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP / Getty Images

The Los Angeles County could become the largest county in the country to launch a guaranteed basic income pilot program, if the proposal to send $ 1, 03 dollars per month at least 1, 000 residents .

Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Sheila Kuehl suggest that this program is active for three years . What has not yet been detailed are the criteria that the participants would have to meet.

Tabti Mitchell and Kuehl are of the opinion that the county should have a permanent policy to combat poverty and not only specific emergency measures to face the economic crisis that has caused the coronavirus pandemic.

“We must essentially change the idea that people who face Financial insecurity have somehow failed and recognize instead that it is the inequality and lack of access embedded in our economy and in government aid programs what has failed us ”, you can read in the motion joint of both supervisors.

Measures similar to this pilot program, which will be voted on next Tuesday in the board of supervisors, have already been applied throughout the country. The most recent and closest examples are those of Compton and Stockton , where for two years they sent $ 125 dollars to 100 residents randomly chosen. Neither city put conditions or restrictions on the participants.

A study of the initiative’s first year of operation in Stockton showed that income Basic significantly improved the job prospects, financial stability and general well-being of the participants . The analysis also concluded that the $ 500 Monthly dollars led to many participants getting full-time jobs.

Last April it was the Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, who officially joined the initiative. The Los Angeles politician included in his local budgets an item of $ 24 millions of dollars for the Guaranteed Basic Income and explained that the proposed project would send $ 1, 000 dollars at 2, 000 Angelina families . In San Diego, progress is also being made on a similar program targeting 125 families .

The pandemic has also caused a growing number of elected officials across the country show interest their territories, so that their participants receive the stipulated amount on a monthly basis without having restrictions on how or in what to spend the money.