2y ago

$750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

www.latimes.com

If 100 homeless people were given $750 per month for a year, no questions asked, what would they spend it on?
That question was at the core of a controlled study conducted by a San Francisco-based nonprofit and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.
The results were so promising that the researchers decided to publish results after only six months. The answer: food, 36.6%; housing, 19.5%; transportation, 12.7%; clothing, 11.5%; and healthcare, 6.2%, leaving only 13.6% uncategorized.
Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20231221131158/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-19/750-a-month-no-questions-asked-improved-the-lives-of-homeless-people

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2y ago

$750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

www.latimes.com /california/story/2023-12-19/750-a-month-no-questions-asked-improved-the-lives-of-homeless-people

137 comments

Giving people money improves their quality of life?
Who would have guessed?
- Of course, but it's not a very good experiment for a mass rollout. On a mass scale I hypothsize it will diminish motivation to find a job, thereby reducing the number of taxpayers, and that leads to the big question: who are you taking this money away from? 9 times out of 10 it's middle class folks. 1%ers and corporations can afford to spend the money to get every single tax break, so middle class without those resources will end up paying most of the bill.
  
  I'm glad you came up with a hypothesis, fortunately scientists have already tested your hypothesis (or something very analogous) and failed to prove it, in fact they have indicated the opposite effect.
  I hope that in the name of scientific knowledge and progress you take this research into account and change your view based on the available information.
  
  Luckily every study at every scale on UBIs has not found any loss in motivation. What it actually has shown is people use the financial breathing room to train up and get better jobs, thereby societally paying back more than they put in, in the long term. The kind of society that can implement UBI can also tax the rich intelligently and fairly.
  
  It's been calculated multiple times that UBI would have a similar cost to existing welfare programs due to the significantly reduced overhead. Thus whoever pays for UBI are the same ones currently paying for existing welfare.
  
  It might sound backwards but for a lot of people, myself included, not having a job will actually diminish motivation.
  The frustration of applying for jobs and going for interviews with no response for months on end only adds to the stress of not having any money which adds up to a “what’s the fucking point?” train of thought, which hasn’t resulted in homelessness for me, but I could see how it would for other people.
  
  There is massive, long term UBI study happening ongoing in Kenya, and the results are extremely positive.
  About 200 Kenyan villages were assigned to one of three groups and started receiving payment in 2018.
  A monthly universal basic income (UBI) empowered recipients and did not create idleness. They invested, became more entrepreneurial, and earned more. The common concern of “laziness” never materialized, as recipients did not work less nor drink more.
  Both a large lump sum and a long-term UBI proved highly effective. The lump sum enabled big investments and the guarantee of 12 years of UBI encouraged savings and risk-taking.
  Early findings from the world’s largest UBI study, Dec 6, 2023 by GiveDirectly
  The actual paper, Universal Basic Income: Short-Term Results from a Long-Term Experiment in Kenya, Abhijit Banerjee, Michael Faye, Alan Krueger, Paul Niehaus, Tavneet Suri, 15 September 2023
  
  Your hypothesis is an intuitive and common fear, and so has been studied before and found insubstantial, with Canada's "Mincome" experiment being one of the most notable: in the 70s Canada targeted members of a town with a minimum income for five years, and saw results like people opening businesses with loans they could get now that they could cite the income. Where they saw people leaving jobs, it was often for education - their high school enrollment hit 100% for the senior year for the first time ever, due to the kids not needing to help bring in money. It was ended during a fiscal crisis when the government was looking for places to tighten belts. This BBC article is a good read on it, focused on the positive health impact.
  
  It would push people to find better jobs; advocate for better working conditions, and actually have money to spend.
  Sure, you can go work at a grocery store part-time while making your $750 for some extra cash. Most of that $750 is gonna go into grocery costs anyway, might as well make some extra money.
  
  I pay enough taxes to support 125 $750 users like this and would gladly pay it, too. 125 people that are better off would have a significant positive impact to a community, and I'm all for it.
  Also money that they spend, somewhere at some point would likely be taxed.
  Your logic is flawed.
  
  Rogan, is that you?
“What can we do to help these people whose problem is that they don’t have money?”
“Give them money?”
“That’s just crazy enough to work!”
- Wait a sec. You're telling me that giving money to people that don't have money helps them do things that require money?! I'm shocked.
Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered.
I feel extremely bad for the control group.
- yeah. stuff like this really feels like human experimentation (because it kinda is). i wish people were more willing to just implement these UBI programs at the government level. the results would be so nice
  
  It's unfortunately necessary. They have to have evidence the strategy works before public money can be spent on it.
  To get that evidence, they have to do studies, and those studies have to be serious, which means following the standard scientific methods. Which means needing a control group.
  It just happens that the control group in this scenario is getting the short end of the stick.
- So do I, but their sacrifice has led to good quality data that shows that giving unhoused people money without conditions helps them to reintegrate, become housed and hopefully employed and again contributing to society as a whole. It’s a silver bullet against thinking like “don’t give that homeless person money; they’ll just spend it on drugs!” that we have been force-fed for decades. Hopefully, that may lead to better outcomes for them.
$750 a month is like $9000 a year.
I spend $500 on groceries!
I think this program would help a lot in so many ways and I hope it passes.
- That's 0.7% of the 2023 US defence budget ($857.9B). I'd much rather have my taxes going to help people in need.
  
  That is $489M. There are 160M tax payers in the US.
  Everyone gives and extra $5/mo, and we can raise it to $1000/mo UBI. Then incorporate more people as the tax base increases.
  
  Translation: "I have money so you can go die, you stupid poor"
  
  we could probably cut back on one of our 14 aircraft carriers
$750 a month would be life altering for me.
- Life altering like you can buy food and clothes?
  
  and perhaps sleep on an actual bed for the first time in over 20 years.
  
  yes
- In my country that's a very solid salary.
  But it's important to remain in context of the US and the starting point is around 0$, so having only 750$ still makes you very poor.
All these UBI experiments ever seem to demonstrate is the "BI" part.
But the part that needs to be demonstrated, IMHO, is the "U".
- Well we can't do that until we do that. And shitting on the experiments means we'll never do the Universal part.
  
  We can't meaningfully advocate or plan for its implementation unless we have some idea how it would work. And that it can work.
  The sorts of experiments in the OP get us no closer to that. They prove nothing that wasn't already pretty uncontroversial and obvious, and offer no insights about how these programs might be implemented universally.
  Pointing this out does not hold back UBI. Ignoring it, however, does.
  
  It's not the critics of the experiments that are the problem.
  The "experiments" are just watering down the idea of UBI into "just rename existing benefits programs".
  You'd need to restructure an entire country's tax systems to really do a proper experiment. No country could just afford to give everyone free money. You'd have to structure it so the average person pays back exactly what extra they got, and build affordable housing for the people that actually choose to live on just UBI.
  
  This isn't really true.
  We generally don't experiment with economic policy because it's not practical.
  The main impediment to UBI is not supporting data, but political will. Voters are so used to punishing poor people that UBI just doesn't resonate with the voting public. Of course that will change with the continuing encroachment of automation.
  Additionally UBI is not all or nothing. You could increase it over time. If 20% of average salary is the objective, then start with 1% this year and increase it by 1% each year for the next 19 years. It will take 20 years to dismantle the other welfare systems anyway.
- We're honestly not at a point where UBI is sustainable. However, this clearly demonstrates that replacing existing welfare with straight up cash, and changing how that cash scales down as people approach a "normal minimum" income, is vastly superior to our current system
  
  this clearly demonstrates that replacing existing welfare with straight up cash, and changing how that cash scales down as people approach a “normal minimum” income, is vastly superior to our current system
  These experiments aren't even trying to demonstrate that. And they don't.
- This was my initial reaction also, but taking a closer look the article doesn't say anything about UBI. This is not a UBI experiment.
  
  Correct. It's basic income for homeless people.
  
  A fair point. But it looks, swims, and quacks like a UBI experiment.
There's also been a lot of success with providing housing to the homeless. When they have stability, they use it to create a better life for themselves, and that translates to lower costs in terms of enforcement, ER visits, legal aid, and incarceration.
The US doesn't provide for this in federal policy because we like our laws to reflect the cruelty and malice we have in our hearts for perceived undesirables.
- If you are mentally ill or had a streak of bad luck, it's your own fault. Be smart and get born rich like almost every rich person does. My God why are people so stupid?
  /s
  
  Whoa there rich people were born the same way we were. They followed a simple 7 step plan.
  Stay in school. Even if it's stupid and boring.
  Don't get D's in school or else Dad has to make another donation and that comes out of my allowance.
  Keep my nose clean. Nobody thinks cocaine powder is a fashion accessory.
  Start a business.
  Get 1 million dollar "loan" from my parents.
  Have my parent's lawyer "talk" to the town council about why I didn't need permits for my business.
  Graduate college and activate my trust fund!
  See rich people work hard to get rich.
On 750 a month I could live in the forest somewhere and do occasional supply runs to replenish my tree fort. Or do a shit ton of drugs but either way I'd be pretty happy.
- Grow shrooms; do both.
- Tbh as long as you weren't hurting anyone, putting others in danger and were happy I personally wouldn't give a toss what you did with your money even if that came from taxes I paid. Better this then the current homeless situation.
How did they collect data on what these homeless people were spending the money on? Sounds like some questions were asked after all...
- They asked the questions afterwards...
  
  Exactly, they gave it to them and said "do whatever you want with it" then just checked what they did later.
- Receipts probably
- Couldn't they have just given them a card and just checked the bank statements later.
  
  Yeah, I bet that "uncategorized" is just the amount of cash they took out, some of which might have gone to drugs, some of which might have gone to other random cash shit.
750$ a month changed the lives of people that had nothing? Yeah, right. Obviously!
- Studies that test obvious expectations are actually super important. Sometimes the results are not what you expect, and the rest of the time, you have a study to point to whenever someone tries to say there's no evidence of that outcome.
  
  The problem is this is the umpteenth study in the US alone. We know it works. It's just a bunch of rich people crying because they'd lose leverage over their "workers".
  
  Wow, that's a big deal to me to learn that. I would have never considered that. Thanks a lot, very bro of you.
- Well, there is an opinion that homeless people would use all money for booze, tobacco and drugs, etc. A study like this helps to contradict such opinion.
  
  What else are people supposed to use their money on. People be projecting all the time.
  
  It isn't listed here in the citation, but tobacco, alcohol and drugs represented 2% of the expenses.
  An important bit of information if someone's gonna use it as an argument.
- ubi is unfortunately not really feasible from an economical standpoint, unless the amount is really low; then it can probably be funded by taxes, even within the current system...
  but tbh I don't think it's worth it...
  i think focus should be put on making work/the job market more fair and inclusive to everyone instead.
A fairly similar study from a few months ago
One red flag here is that they don't mention how they chose whom to give the stipend to.
That being said I think its a great idea and correlates with other studies that show that money is the best thing you can offer someone who's struggling. Not food, not shelter, money.
I'm not an American but this will be tough to sell as you guys are notorious for porking away public funds (e.g. covid payouts) so this is much more complex than the article implies.
- easiest way to avoid misuse is to give it to all. if your doing alright you will pay more tax equal to what you get, if your struggling it will be a boost, if your in mills/bills club you will pay more than your getting. Anyone who falls to the struggling level would have it immediately though with no paperwork or offices to go to and less bureaucracy to pay for (have to add this for the folks who don't see why its helps them if they are not getting a net gain)
  
  Agree. Simple systems are more resistant to corruption.
  
  For the purpose of this study, though, they did not give it to all. There was a control group that was not getting any money whatsoever, along with...ya know, the rest of the homeless in the area that weren't part of the study.
  If all participants were chosen entirely at random, ok, but if there was a selection process, then that's going to affect the results.
  
  you're = you are
  Your = possession
No. Shit.
Seeing as California has one of the worst homelessness problems in the U.S., it seems like a great testing ground for this policy. Maybe if they pass this into law and it helps them reduce their homelessness population, it could potentially be adopted elsewhere.
That being said, California is no stranger to permissive laws with respect to the homeless, and that’s part of the reason their homeless population is so high, so…I’m skeptical, but willing to be proven wrong.
- Another factor is that you're a lot less likely to freeze to death living on the street in California than in a lot of states.
  If you are homeless, hopping a freight train south can be a simple survival tactic
We give people money like that in Ireland and while it helps, it doesn't solve anything.
- Why do you say it doesn't solve anything? Are you suggesting the rate of homelessness in Ireland is unaffected by the program?
  
  There's still a lot of homeless people. I'd agree that there would likely be more if we gave nothing.
I love the idea of this experiment and my hope is that it leads to some real programs that ultimately lead to UBI, however I hate the article... specifically the headline: "No Questions Asked"... then they go and start asking questions about how the money was spent. How about '$750 a month, no strings attached', or '$750 a month to spend how they want'?
Words have meaning and this should be important to people such as journalists who make a living through using words.
$750 a month would improve the lives of plenty of people who aren't homeless too. Up to and including the middle class.
But I suppose a UBI is a non-starter everywhere in the U.S. but Alaska.
- That would basically cover my student loan payments, so it would be equivalent to loan forgiveness for me. Improve is an understatement, that would actually allow me to save money. Right now my wife and I make slightly above area median income and we're just treading water financially. This would be a game changer. We could actually consider having a kid.
  
  For what it's worth 750 a month is probably less than what a kid costs. Depends on where you live but that seems decidedly low price for a kid

137 comments