Salem launches guaranteed income program for 100 residents living in poverty

Salem is the latest Massachusetts city to try to stabilize the lives of some of its lowest-income residents by providing monthly cash payments, with no strings attached.

The city announced Tuesday that it is launching a guaranteed income pilot program, which will give $500 a month over the next year to 100 residents living at or below the federal poverty line. Residents can apply for the program beginning on Oct. 28, and participants will be chosen by a lottery.

The Salem program is being funded by federal money awarded to the city through the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA. That one-time federal funding has supported similar programs in several other Massachusetts cities, including Cambridge, Somerville and Chelsea. But as those federal funds run out, the future of those programs are uncertain, at best. Supporters are looking to the state and federal governments for help funding guaranteed income programs on a more permanent basis.

The city of Salem will partner with researchers at Salem State University, who plan to study the impact the cash assistance has on the lives of those receiving it.

The city’s mayor, Dominick Pangallo, said the research component is one of two primary goals.

“When you have evidence you can point to when you’re talking to state and federal policymakers to demonstrate that this is a program that works, that provides tangible benefits to people, that frees them up to become more productive workers, for their children to be able to succeed in school … it’s easier to justify the request for larger supports for future programs like this,” Pangallo said.

The second goal, Pangallo said, is more direct.

“It’s an opportunity to help 100 of our most vulnerable neighbors make ends meet in a time when it’s really challenging from an affordability standpoint. And I think that we want to be a city that works for everybody that’s here,” he said.

About 14% of Salem’s population is living at or below the federal poverty line — qualifying them to apply for the pilot. Lori Stewart works with many of those Salem residents as the city’s neighborhood stability coordinator. In that role she works to help people in the city who are on the brink of homelessness, or who are currently unhoused and looking for a place to live.

“Just since January 1st, I’ve worked with over 550 new individuals, unique individuals, people that I haven’t seen before,” Stewart said. “So, there’s tremendous need in the community. And quite a few of the people that I work with will fall into the parameters of this program. … And they won’t have to produce a ton of documents to get this. And they’ll be able to do things like pay their rent, buy medicines.”

Stewart acknowledges that the city’s pilot is limited in scope.

“While this is a small drop in the bucket for the need that’s out there, we’re hoping to study this program with our partners at Salem State and demonstrate the type of success that this program can have,” she said.

Salem is launching the pilot just under the wire as the federal government has set the end of this calendar year for ARPA funds to be under contract. The city is using about $600,000 of its ARPA funds to support the guaranteed income program.

It’s not clear how Salem or the other cities that have used ARPA funds to launch these kinds of pilot program would be able to fund their continuation once those federal funds are gone.

“There’s no immediate plan for continuing it post-ARPA,” Pangallo said. “We’re very specifically calling this a pilot program for 12 months, because that’s what’s available to us. But our hope would be that it would demonstrate — along with the other 70 cities and towns and counties that are doing this kind of experiment [across the country] — that there is a tool here that states and the federal government could look to support in some manner.”

A similar guaranteed income program that has supported 1,923 families in Cambridge since last year is set to end this coming February.

“We are all trying to sort of figure out what happens when these funds run out,” said Geeta Pradhan, president of the Cambridge Community Foundation, which is administering the city’s guaranteed income pilot called Rise Up Cambridge. “They don’t have an identified source of funding yet. But I think the commitment is there to want to make sure that we’re retaining the stability that families have gained.”

Late last month, the Cambridge City Council unanimously approved a resolution supporting the city’s exploration of a guaranteed income program to succeed the current one.

Unlike the Salem program and others in Somerville and Chelsea, the Cambridge program was not a lottery. All families with kids who make under 250% of the federal poverty line — roughly $46,000 a year for a family of two — were eligible for the program.

Joanna Jimenez, a Cambridge resident who participated in the program, testified about its impact last month at a Cambridge City Council hearing.

“As a result from the Rise program, not only did it give me the financial freedom to be a mom and not be at work all the time — to be present at the dinner table when my kids came home was life changing,” Jiminez said. “I was able to use the Rise program to reduce the hours of work and be home, but also to educate myself. I was a student of Cambridge Learning Community where I got my HiSET [high school equivalency exam]. And today I am a paralegal student at Bunker Hill Community College.”

The Cambridge Rise Up program followed an initial, smaller pilot program involving 130 families. Research on that pilot by the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice showed participants saw higher levels of employment, improved financial health, increased housing and food security and increased time for parenting.

As Cambridge tries to figure out how to continue that kind of progress, Pradhan of the Cambridge Community Foundation is looking to Beacon Hill for assistance.

“State funds would be fabulous,” she said. “Not only for our community, but for other communities that have struggling populations.”

The state legislature’s Special Commission on Poverty has heard from advocates supporting guaranteed income programs, and is expected to put out a report with its recommendations early next year.

“The call of this commission is to listen to people across the state,” said Rep. Marjorie Decker, who is co-chairing the commission. “The importance of UBI [universal basic income] for communities that have been able to roll out a UBI program like here in Cambridge, they have been an important part of the listening tour.”

Decker said her commission will look at a range of approaches to reducing poverty, including the roles of federal, state and local governments, as well as nonprofits and the private sector.

“I think it’s important to keep in mind there’s a lot of different ways of reducing poverty, and it is the commission’s job to figure out how they want to frame that,” Decker said.

The new Salem program is being administered by a national nonprofit organization called UpTogether.

“We know what works,” said Jessica Ridge, UpTogether’s partnerships director. “We’ve seen it work over and over again across the country and in Massachusetts. The big boost of federal money made a difference and allowed municipalities and often philanthropic partners … to work together to try this.”

Ridge pointed to Austin, Texas, as an example of a city that moved a guaranteed income program “from pilot to permanent.”

“They started with a philanthropically funded pilot. They moved to a blended pilot [combining philanthropic and city funds], and they now have a dedicated line item for guaranteed income in their city,” Ridge said. “It can be done.”

This story was originally published by GBH News on Oct. 15, 2024.