Is a guaranteed income policy right for Tacoma? The mayor is exploring the possibility

Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards has joined 11 other mayors from around the country to pledge support for a guaranteed income program.

Ideally, a fully implemented guaranteed income program would give all residents a monthly cash payment, typically in the range of $500 to $1,000.

Alongside Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Woodards on June 29 joined the group Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, which advocates for a federal guaranteed income program and explores starting cash payment programs in the mayors’ individual cities.

The group was started by Stockton, California Mayor Michael Tubbs, who launched a pilot program last year giving $500 per month to 125 randomly selected residents. The pilot was funded by local philanthropists and private sector donations.

Some Tacoma residents have supported a guaranteed income in the past.

If a pilot program were to happen in Tacoma, City Council member Robert Thoms emphasized the funding would have to come from private sector financial support.

“We are not seeking at this time to propose using scarce city funding, but should we find the right partners, I am sure we would be open to finding a way to pilot here,” said Thoms, chairman of the council’s Economic Development Committee.

According to Woodards, there aren’t plans for hosting a pilot program in Tacoma. She said she is excited to advocate for the policy at the federal level and learn more about it before talking through potential implementation with the City Council.

“If we’re looking for a way to fix our structural racism issues in this country, then we are going to have to look at every policy that we have that doesn’t work for people of color.” she said. “When (Tubbs) asked me to join this group, it was a no-brainer for me, because this is one of the potential programs that could do that. “

In a July 3 virtual town hall meeting, Tubbs described the rationale behind his program.

“People are working incredibly hard, in jobs that don’t ... pay for basic necessities,” he said. “Essential workers that have to stand in line at a food bank. We can’t operate in 2020 with a 1930s social contract.”

Tubbs also said his support for the policy came after reading Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final book on poverty, where he wrote: “The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”

Results from Stockton’s pilot program showed that the guaranteed income was spent on expenses such as food, utilities and home mortgages. Only 2% of participants spent the money on nonessential items.

“People spend money just how you and I spend money,” Tubbs added.

Woodards said 25% of residents in Pierce County are classified as ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained and Employed, meaning they are fully employed but struggling to pay for necessities and one small incident away from financial disaster. Those people would benefit greatly from a guaranteed income, but all residents would benefit from additional cash, she said.

Former Tacoma mayor Marilyn Strickland, a candidate for Congress who has been endorsed by Universal Basic Income proponent Andrew Yang, said her interest in a guaranteed income program stemmed from researching options for economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you have mayors signing onto this during a pandemic, trying to think of how they can support the people that they represent,” Strickland said.

She added that she thinks that philanthropists in the Pierce County region who have donated to causes financially helping families would be interested in funding this policy, once they have learned more about it.

Woodards’s interest in the policy comes at a time when Tacoma’s unemployment rate is 16.9% with 77,900 residents unemployed, according to a May 2020 Bureau of Labor Statistics report. According to the United Way of Pierce County, even in 2014, 24% of Pierce County households were earning less than what was necessary to afford basic necessities, which United Way calculated to be $55,596 a year for a family of four.

At the moment, Woodards has other pressing matters at hand. She said that in the next 30 days, she hopes to have a police transformation plan finalized with dates and processes, and she wants to see COVID-19 financial relief policies that expire soon — such as eviction notices and the national moratorium on foreclosures—are renewed. But she’s keeping a policy like guaranteed income in mind as she works on coronavirus economic relief.

“More money in people’s pockets puts that into the economy and means less services are needed,” she said. “We don’t provide enough services as it is. And we know that when part of our community does better, we all do better.”

This story was originally published July 7, 2020 at 5:05 AM.