$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.

Almost like the 1% are stealing from each and every one of us. With a fraction of their profits each one of us would live a better life.

Giving people money improves their quality of life?

Who would have guessed?

“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!”

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.

$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.

$750 a month would be life altering for me.

All these UBI experiments ever seem to demonstrate is the "BI" part.

But the part that needs to be demonstrated, IMHO, is the "U".

Now watch how out of touch conservatives are when they start claiming that these people are living in luxury. It's a great project and I'm not trying to demerit the people in charge, but $750 doesn't go far at all in a place like San Francisco

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.

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.

How did they collect data on what these homeless people were spending the money on? Sounds like some questions were asked after all...

750$ a month changed the lives of people that had nothing? Yeah, right. Obviously!

I wish we have UBI.

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.