The state of Oregon is considering a bill to give homeless and low-income people $1,000 a month in universal basic income.
The bill, introduced last month, would establish a People’s Housing Assistance Fund Demonstration Program through the state’s Department of Human Services.
The $1,000 payments could be used at recipients’ discretion.
According to Bill Track 50, the legislation would ‘provide 12 monthly payments of $1,000 to individuals who are experiencing homelessness, are at risk of homelessness, are severely rent burdened or earn at or below 60 percent of area median income’.
‘Payments may be used for rent, emergency expenses, food, child care or other goods or services of the participant’s choosing,’ the bill states.
Homeless tents on the sidewalk in Portland, Oregon (file photo)
Portland currently has more than 700 homeless encampments across the city
People who spend more than 50 percent of their monthly household income on rent, and those who earn 60 percent or less of the area median income would also be able to receive funding.
The bill would require a study on those who receive the payments, broken down among certain demographics, such as race, veteran status and risk of domestic violence.
The program would continue until January 2026, at which point the study would be due for presentation, the bill states.
Senate Bill 603 would appropriate $25 million from Oregon state’s general fund to create the People’s Housing Assistance Fund Demonstration Program, administered by the Department of Human Services, according to Katu, a media outlet based in Portland.
Sen. Wlnsvey Campos or state Rep. Khanh Pham are the proposed bill’s sponsors.
A similar program was implemented in Vancouver B.C. in Canada in 2018, with homeless participants receiving $7500 each.
UBI is already in motion in the U.S. Established in 1983, Alaska’s Permanent Dividend Fund sends annual payments, generally between $1,000 and $2,000, to more than 600,000 Alaskan residents.
There have also been other UBI programs in states such as Colorado, Georgia, Illinois and New Jersey.
Palm Springs, California is planning to give universal basic income to transgender and non-binary residents.
Transgender residents are eligible to receive UBI of up to $900 per month solely for identifying as transgender or non-binary.
The new pilot program will have $200,000 set aside for allocation after a unanimous vote by the Palm Springs City Council earlier in 2022.
The city stated that the program is only for those who meet a poverty threshold.
‘I am low income and I have to say that it is very very difficult to make ends meet especially on a very small budget,’ said Florence resident, Charene Reavis during a public hearing for the bill.
Reavis is on the steering committee for Residents Organizing for Change, a group of organizations and residents pushing for policy and housing solutions in Oregon.
‘When I was coming into housing, I had to borrow money for my rent, deposit and it took me almost a year to recover from everything I had to do to just to move in,’ she said.
Sen. Wlnsvey Campos, one of the proposed bill’s sponsors
Rep. Khanh Pham is also sponsoring the bill
Oregon has experienced high levels of homelessness for several years, especially in areas like Portland where up to 700 tent camps have taken over sections of the city.
The state has also been trying to tackle increased drug use and trafficking after it passed a law decriminalizing street drugs last year.
The state Health Authority ruled that the legislation had ‘failed’ just seven months after it went into effect.
A national report released late 2022 showed the number of people experiencing homelessness across the U.S. has been relatively steady since 2016 despite the Coronavirus pandemic.
The report also showed that the number of people sleeping on the streets in Oregon has spiked.
There were 582,462 people sleeping on the streets nationally during a single night in January 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — 0.3% up from 2020.
Point-in-time counts aim to provide a snapshot of who is sleeping on the streets on any given night, and they are often taken as an undercount.
In Oregon, there were 14,655 people, an increase of 22.5% since 2020, according to the federal data,
