Long Beach To Give Out $500 Per Month In Guaranteed Income To 500 Low-Income Residents

By CNN Newsource

Published July 8, 2021 1:59 PM

By Web Staff

LONG BEACH, California (KCAL, KCBS) — The city of Long Beach announced Wednesday that it has launched a guaranteed income pilot program for 500 of its residents.

Under the program, the 500 residents will each receive $500 a month for a year, Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said in a news release.

All the participants will be single-parent households, mostly single mothers, who earn under the poverty line.

The participants will also receive services including free childcare, transportation support and workforce training.

The program will focus on the 90813 zip code, which the mayor says has the “highest concentrated area of family poverty.”

The initiative, which is headed up by the Long Beach Economic Development Department, will start taking applications at some point in the coming months and hopes to launch by the end of this year. It wasn’t immediately clear how it is being funded.

Researchers with the Office of Economic Research at California State University will analyze and study the pilot program and provide recommendations on how to develop it.

Last October, Compton announced it was launching a universal basic income program to distribute cash payments to 800 low-income residents over a period of two years.

Last December, the Long Beach City Council passed an ordinance that requires grocers with at least 300 employees nationwide to provide their employees with an extra $4 per hour in hazard pay due to the coronavirus pandemic. In April, in response to the ordinance, Kroger closed two of its stores, a Ralphs and a Food 4 Less.

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