Bread for the City: CashRx

Guaranteed income has repeatedly been shown to  improve people’s lives,  with evaluations of GI programs showing consistent and significant:

 Bread for the City , a non-profit in Washington, D.C., aims to help low-income residents to develop “power to determine the future of their own communities.” They do so through programs that

• Objective well-being is assessed using indicators that measure the following: education, physical and built environment, community, and the economy.
• Subjective well-being is an internal assessment, typically self-reported, that the CDC defines as “the general agreement that it includes the presence of positive emotions and moods, life satisfaction, fulfillment, and positive function and the absence of negative emotions.”

• Ensure the person understands and consents to their story being told, including the purpose of the storytelling
• Center the needs and desires of the person whose story is being told
• Take a posture of listening and learning
• Uplift individuals’ experiences in their own words
• Take into account the positionality of the listener and the storyteller

 D.C. Council Bill 24-616 : Excludes EITC and cash assistance payments from the determination of income to qualify for public assistance

We also recognize the need for sustained advocacy around guaranteed income as a solution to generational poverty and a host of associated issues. Despite the widespread empirical evidence around the success of guaranteed income programs, public awareness of these findings are low, and support for this potentially transformative policy is patchy. We encourage everyone reading this report to see the DC Guaranteed Income Coalition’s  Advocacy Toolkit  and to help spread the word about the power and impact of this policy.