Philly is launching a new guaranteed income study
Parents who have received TANF benefits for at least five years will receive an additional $500 per month. The program is part of a series of income pilots to address poverty in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia has announced a new guaranteed income study designed to determine to what extent additional financial aid increases economic mobility for families in need.
The study by the Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity is aimed at parents who have received “temporary assistance for needy families” benefits, known as TANF, from the state for more than five years. Its design: Over a year, 50 recipients of extended TANF will be granted an additional $500 per month, while 250 other recipients will receive an additional $50. The first payments were issued June 17.
The city expects the study to reveal ways to make financial assistance more equal, and especially to guarantee public funding is distributed regardless of race and gender. More than every other Black child in the United States is living in one of the 18 states with the lowest benefits, according to the community empowerment office.
“States’ withdrawal of funding from cash assistance has harshly affected Black families,” the office wrote in a statement, as states “with larger shares of Black residents tend to spend smaller shares of their TANF funds on basic assistance.”
Cities like Durham, N.C., are already offering unrestricted cash to avoid systemic racism. In Philadelphia, with 43% of the population Black, the need to do so is arguably bigger.
The new pilot study is meant to pave the way for funding that provides families extra income without being attached to restrictions. It is part of a series of antipoverty experiments Philly has launched recently. With a poverty rate of about 23%, Philadelphia is the poorest U.S. big city.
In July 2022, the city started one of its first guaranteed income programs, focusing on the housing situation of low-income residents. To make up for increasing everyday costs, the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation and the city distributed an average of $890 per month to 300 households that had been randomly selected from Philadelphia Housing Authority’s Housing Choice Voucher and public housing wait-lists.
The most recent program is yet another effort to address poverty in Philadelphia. In early 2020, City Council announced its plan to lift 100,000 residents out of poverty by 2024.