Wouldn't a Large Scale Local Basic Income Project Be More Helpful than the Cares Campus?

A recap of our recent reporting plus bonus content.

According to numbers provided by Washoe County, it costs about $64 a day to help an unhoused person staying at the Cares Campus.

That’s $1920 per month per person on average, while the average rent in Reno is estimated at about $1,430 per month.

This makes us and others wonder if this money is being misspent, given that many people we interview on the streets prefer to hide in tents or in vehicles at night, not wanting a crowded prison and warehouse like environment. Meanwhile, as indicated below, the transition of people staying at the Cares Campus who then move into secure housing seems very low.

So what about establishing a bigger scale pilot basic income program?

From Denver, to the Bay Area, to LA to a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign funded program in Champaign County, unhoused residents have been receiving monthly stipends, with huge improvements in their own lives.

The Denver Basic Income Project takes a sliding scale approach offering from $50 a month up to $1,000, with other benefits such as free cell phones.

It also gives upfront sums. One woman living in a city-sanctioned campsite who had been in a car wreck and had lost her job won a DBIP lottery, receiving an initial payment of $6,000 plus $500 per month. This allowed her to go back to school where she now studies construction management. Thanks to the DBIP funds, she’s securely housed, has been able to plan surgery for her accident injury and also takes care of a niece in need.

Publicly funded and privately run it has distributed more than $10 million of no strings attached cash benefits to more than 800 unhoused people since late 2022.

According to a study, 45 percent of its participants secured housing within 10 months.

At the Cares Campus, those numbers are much lower. Cares Campus unique clients per month have gone from a low of 741 to a high of 1,323 in the past year, while its charts of “total number of exits to permanent housing” had a high of 39 in August to a low of 18 in November.

It’s also estimated that DBIP contributed to nearly $600,000 in cost savings in emergency services, hospital visits and jail time during its first year of operation.

Remember the 2006 New Yorker story about unhoused Reno-based Million Dollar Murray [Barr] who had, over the course of 10 years of expensive “non-solutions” such as multiple jail and hospital visits, cost taxpayers one million dollars?

Are we still on that road of wasting money without really helping?

In Stockton, where the SEED program gave 125 residents $500 of unrestricted cash per month for two years, 40 percent of participants landed a full time job.

In the Bay Area, the Miracle Money program provided $500 a month to unhoused individuals for six months, with 66% of them securing stable housing.

This led to Los Angeles County, San Francisco and Oakland initiating the Miracle Messages program, through which $750 per month is distributed to individuals who are paired with a trained volunteer for weekly phone and text support.

In Illinois, over 50 families are currently receiving $500 a month to spend as they see fit, via a privately funded non profit coordinated one-year pilot program.

Isn’t it time for Reno or Washoe County to try one of these bigger types of basic income programs to see what its outcomes would be locally?

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