Report backs merits of guaranteed income program in Old Fourth Ward
A task force created by District 2 Council member Amir Farokhi to study economic security and inequality in the Old Fourth Ward recently unveiled its decision to call for a guaranteed income program focused on Black women and mothers in the neighborhood.
Created in 2020, the task force brought together 28 local and national stakeholders to produce a report with recommendations aimed at addressing wealth inequity for the most vulnerable residents in the Old Fourth Ward, a neighborhood that Farokhi represents on the Council.
During an event hosted this January at the famed Ebenezer Baptist Church, Farokhi thanked his fellow task force members for their work in generating the report and helped to outline how a guaranteed income program could benefit the community.
The report produced by the task force notes that across the country and in the Old Fourth Ward, there is a large diversity in the experiences and economic circumstances of Black women and their families. However, the report notes that the following groups may be of particular interest in a pilot program based in the Old Fourth Ward that centers on the value that Black women contribute to the neighborhood and city:
• Households headed by or co-headed by Black women with children below/above the benefits cliff;
• Households headed by or co-headed by Black women with children who earn income sufficient to place them just above the eligibility level to receive public benefits (the so-called “benefits cliff ”);
• Black women that are experiencing material hardship according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which captures both benefits and costs not included in the official measure; and
• Young Black women with no children, who are struggling to establish financial security.
The full report is available here.
Farokhi noted that historically, the city’s population of Black women and mothers has been undervalued and discriminated against for both gender and race.
“At least in the neighborhood, Black women are the largest population of residents that are economically insecure, and when you can invest in women, the impacts are larger than any individual woman because they’re often caretakers for kids and for seniors. There’s a multiplier effect that benefits a lot of people, not just the one person who may be receiving the support,” Farokhi said.
Following the release of the report, the next steps would be finding philanthropic support to fund a multi-year pilot project.
“We’re in existing conversations with local philanthropy and we’ll continue to expand that beyond Atlanta to national support as well,” Farokhi said. “We’re hoping to have some initial commitments soon from local philanthropic foundations, and that will hopefully kickstart a larger fundraising push in the coming months.”
As part of the initiative, the task force also called for leaders at the federal level to explore building a national program for guaranteed income. Farokhi noted that there are several programs being developed across the country in various cities that include a variety of focal points.
“I think the fact that this would be the first program of its kind in a big Southern city and that it’s tightly targeted to a vulnerable community can provide some useful data points,” Farokhi said about how the program in the Old Fourth Ward could showcase how guaranteed income works. “Also, it just builds increasing national support for a simple solution for a longstanding problem.”
On a historical note, the Old Fourth Ward is where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born, and Farokhi noted that Dr. King laid out a vision for how universal basic income would help fight poverty.
“The concept goes back hundreds of years, but Dr. King, I think our city’s most cherished son, called for a guaranteed income to eradicate poverty toward the end of his life because he saw that there was so much entrenched red tape, bureaucracy, and racism in the existing social safety net and that it wasn’t working. The only way to create economic security and get rid of poverty was to give people money, and that remains true today,” he said.
He added that he thinks the precariousness of the current social safety net helps to reinforce why basic income can be a better model for boosting economic security.
“I think you can look at the current patchwork of social programs and the outcomes and see that we still have entrenched poverty, Farokhi said. “Even in those populations that are benefiting from the current social programs, there is still enormous economic stress and insecurity. Those programs are often designed to keep people out rather than bring people in just based off the hoops you have to jump through to get the benefits and maintain the benefits.”
He added that guaranteed income could be a counterbalance to ongoing structural inequities and give people greater economic security to afford housing, groceries, and other necessities.
“I think you can ask any American — would you stop working for $500 a month? The answer is no. You can’t,” he said, noting studies show that a stronger financial backing helps people make better employment decisions, including new careers and training opportunities. “A guaranteed income program cuts through a lot of the failures of the existing social safety net. I don’t believe it needs to replace the existing social safety net, but the current one is not working, and this is a better way to help make it work.”
