photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Several people gathered for a "data walk" hosted by hosted by LiveWell Douglas County and the Douglas County Community Foundation on Friday, November 15, 2024.

When health leaders in Lawrence unveiled their five-year community health plan last fall, they proposed giving low-income single mothers in Douglas County a helping hand — by providing a monthly stipend to use for whatever they needed, no strings attached.

It’s called a guaranteed income program, and more and more cities are starting to experiment with them across the country. But in Kansas, a bill being considered by state lawmakers could shut down this effort in Douglas County before it’s really begun.

The bill is called HB 2101, and it would prevent cities and counties in Kansas from establishing a guaranteed income program – which it defines as a program that is not required by federal laws or regulations and that provides individuals with regular cash payments.

Vicki Collie-Akers, who worked with Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health on the five-year Community Health Improvement Plan, told the Journal-World via email that this looks like a classic “preemption bill” — one that would limit local governments’ power to decide their own policies.

“This bill seems to be an example of this and despite being a state in which home rule is constitutionally secured,” Collie-Akers said in the email. “(This) could be interpreted as suppressing community-driven and prioritized solutions to problems that matter in our community.”

One problem that matters to community health leaders in Douglas County is women raising their children in poverty.

The Community Health Improvement Plan’s work group on poverty wanted to devote more resources to helping single mothers who live below what’s called the “ALICE threshold.” “ALICE” stands for “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed” and refers to people who are above the federal poverty line but still don’t make enough to cover the basic cost of living in their community.

Over five years, the plan’s goal is to decrease the percentage of single mothers in Douglas County below this threshold from 64% to 50%.

The health leaders who came up with the plan think the guaranteed income program could help reduce that percentage. As currently envisioned, the program would provide a $500 monthly stipend to female-headed households with children under 18 years old who are under the ALICE threshold. That money would be available to any such family to use for any expenses they have, whether that’s food, child care, medicine, transportation or something else. The stipend would not have any limits on what it could be used for.

According to Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, there’s no timeline yet for implementing the program, and Douglas County commissioners would have to approve it before it could start distributing money.

The idea of a guaranteed income program in Douglas County has been well-received so far. The health plan work group has held several “data walks” focusing on female-headed households and screenings of a documentary, “It’s Basic,” which looks at pilot programs in other communities that have tested the effects of giving people an extra $500 to $1,000 a month with no strings attached.

“Turnout and engagement exceeded expectations of the collaborative group of community partners which worked to bring about the screenings,” Collie-Akers said. “… When discussion occurred, people elevated concerns about getting it right and making sure it reached people for which it would have (an) impact.”

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The supporters of HB 2101 aren’t so enthusiastic about the idea.

In its written testimony submitted last week to the House Committee on Welfare Reform, a “limited government” think tank called the Opportunity Solutions Project painted guaranteed income initiatives as wasteful government programs that “disincentivize work and trap people in government dependency.” The think tank’s testimony claimed that guaranteed income pilot programs across the U.S. are not about research, but instead exist “to build a case for a federal-level taxpayer-funded universal basic income program” that “would cost trillions of dollars, completely undermine the value of work, and cause economic turmoil.”

But the Opportunity Solutions Project’s testimony was the only written testimony the committee received from a proponent of the bill.

Six other written statements were submitted either opposing the bill or neutral to it. And while some of them opposed the bill mainly because it would take away cities’ and counties’ ability to set their own policies, others said there was evidence that guaranteed income programs make a difference in people’s lives, or at least that they aren’t harmful.

Jonathan Smith, the executive director of Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, submitted neutral testimony to the committee. In it, he said the department had studied the guaranteed income pilot program that the health plan was exploring, and it found that “no negative impacts could be expected due to the program.”

But research on guaranteed income programs suggested several positive benefits, he wrote. These included that the programs “provide access to more stable housing,” have a “positive impact on food insecurity” and reduce the stress that low-income parents face.

“Improvements to both housing and nutrition lifted families out of poverty,” Smith wrote in his testimony.

At LDCPH, Health Equity Policy Analyst Shelby Ostrom completed the assessment “that looked at the actual evidence about the impacts of guaranteed income programs,” Collie-Akers said, and “the completed analysis suggested that evidence exists that guaranteed income supports positive impacts to housing and homelessness, food security, poverty, birth outcomes, and early education and childhood development.”

Collie-Akers said the evidence didn’t support the notion that these programs would disincentivize people from working.

“We did not find evidence which suggests that there is (an) impact to employment,” she said.

The data that the health department reviewed isn’t clear about several of the effects of guaranteed income programs. For instance, it said that participants in guaranteed income pilot programs may make less money than they did before, but that this is due to a decrease in hours worked, and that this leads to “improved mental health, and more time for leisure activities.” There also is limited research right now on how children whose parents receive family stipends do in the long run, the health department said.

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Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health wasn’t alone in sharing statistics about these programs with the Legislature. An advocacy group, Kansas Action for Children, said in its statement that more than 150 of these programs have been implemented around the nation, and that “the evidence overwhelmingly shows they help improve lives and move families toward self-sufficiency.”

Kansas Action for Children noted a pilot program in Austin, Texas, in which “participants spent nearly 60% of the funds on housing costs and saw a double-digit increase in housing security over the course of the one-year program.” Another program in Stockton, California, “led to a 12% increase in full-time employment among participants,” and one in Providence, Rhode Island, saw full-time employment figures rise by 16% over the 18-month pilot period.

“Across the programs, participants consistently spent nearly all the money on everyday needs like food, housing, transportation, utilities, and clothing,” the Kansas Action for Children statement read.

Some opponents didn’t even mention the research. They simply said that it’s not the state’s job to interject itself in counties’ and municipalities’ policy decisions.

“Whether a guaranteed income program is a good idea for any individual county is a decision best left to each individual county,” the Kansas Association of Counties said in its written statement.

For Collie-Akers, it seems like there’s a lot of misinformation going around. In particular, she said, many of the guaranteed income pilot programs that have been tried so far aren’t by governments acting on their own; instead, they’re the product of public-private partnerships or philanthropic initiatives.

“So it is misleading to suggest (that) guaranteed income programs inherently have an impact on government spending,” she said.

Even though there are misconceptions and LDCPH has said that not all of the data on guaranteed income is clear, one thing that is clear is that many people in Douglas County want to give it a try. Collie-Akers said the greater-than-expected engagement at the work group’s data walks and film screenings demonstrated that.

“It appears people are very interested in this approach,” Collie-Akers said, “and truly understanding how to have an impact on the issue of poverty.”