Houston UBI Program To Go Forward Despite Objection From Sen. Bettencourt

On March 22, the 1,928 families selected by Houston’s first attempt at addressing poverty through an 18-month guaranteed basic income program received notification of their selection to receive an initial payment of $500. 

The payments are expected to arrive as soon as April 24, pending the participants selecting their preferred payment method.

City leaders like Judge Lina Hidalgo, who introduced the program alongside Commissioner Rodney Ellis in June 2023, hope the program, which targets 10 high-poverty zip codes, can help alleviate income inequality for the selected residents. 

As News 2 Houston reported, the program, Uplift Harris, received 82,500 applications. According to Brandon Maddox, the director of the Office of Planning and Innovation at Harris County Public Health, those applications were narrowed down to 6,000, then again to 1,928, and verified.

Maddox told the outlet, “Of the 82,500 applications that we received, there is a screening system that ensures that those applications that are eligible move to the lottery. There is a phase one and phase two lottery. Under phase one, it randomly selects around 6,000 people. I think we selected a little bit over to make sure we had 6,000 available in our pool of eligible applicants. But from there, those we’ll call them, ‘the lucky 6,000,’ had about a one in three chance of being selected in the final program. The phase two lottery then looks at those 6,000 and selects the final 1,928 to be selected.”

Because the program’s funds were provided through the American Rescue Plan, undocumented immigrants were ineligible to apply, something that Hidalgo and the Executive Director of FIEL Houston, Cesar Espinosa, would like to see happen in the future.

Espinosa told KPRC in January, “For us, it’s unfortunate that people who live in fully undocumented households are not going to be able to receive this money. We would have liked to see that differently.”

Espinosa also added that he felt like outreach was not done to those in mixed-status households. “We are hopeful there are ways that people can apply that live in mixed-status households. The problem is that there hasn’t been outreach done, at least in this community.”

The program, the fifth-largest UBI program in the country, has been attacked by Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt, who described the program as “wide-open, no-strings-attached lottery socialism” to the Wall Street Journal.

As the Houston Chronicle reported in January, Harris County-based attorney Christian Menefee argued in a brief submitted to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that Bettencourt’s objections to the program on grounds that it was unconstitutional were unsubstantiated. 

A similar program was launched in Austin in 2022, and the Urban Institute examined it six months into its launch. The institute discovered that the program enabled recipients to be more stable in their housing situations and less concerned about being evicted.

According to one anonymous recipient of Austin’s program, “‘The cash is very, very helpful for my family. We are struggling with daily life. We don’t have extra for next week, extra for tomorrow. The money cash program [gives more time for me to educate] my children. Then in daily life, I use it to buy enough food and to pay rent. I am not worried so much about being able to pay rent next month.’”

Ellis also responded to Bettencourt’s claims, stating, “No one should be surprised that Senator Bettencourt is enlisting Attorney General Paxton to stand in the way of our efforts to help families put food on the table and make ends meet,” Ellis said.

Ellis continued, “Instead of working toward a truly prosperous, thriving state where everyone can take care of their family and build a better life, state leaders would rather go to their block-and-ban playbook to score political points and maintain a system of inequality they helped create.” 

Hidalgo joined Ellis, defending the county’s program on the merits of GBI programs working to help alleviate poverty. “We will defend it every step of the way,” Hidalgo said. “Guaranteed income has proven successful at reducing poverty in other communities around the nation and around the world, and the people of Harris County deserve access to it.” 

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