Within the next four days, Harris County, Texas, officials will share which low-income applicants have been chosen for its pilot basic income program.
Last week, it was announced that the Uplift Harris program had roughly 83,000 applicants, with officials also confirming that they would tell those selected for the pilot program by Monday, per the Houston Chronicle.
According to officials in the county, the program will supply 1,928 recipients with $500 payments for 18 months, with the first payment going out in April.
For a resident to qualify for the pilot program, they must be 200% below the federal poverty line and live in one of Harris County’s “high-poverty ZIP codes” or be in the county’s Accessing Coordinated Care and Empowering Self Sufficiency.
“Reducing poverty and helping families who are struggling to meet basic needs should not be a political debate,” Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a statement last week, per the outlet. “Our community is experiencing poverty at rates higher than other communities in Texas and around the nation, and we as county leaders have a duty to do everything we can to address it.”
The county says that the 18 months of payments provided by the program will be funded using $20.5 million allocated from the American Rescue Plan, which President Joe Biden signed into law in March 2021. Harris County officials hope they will be able to create “long-term sustainability and gradual expansion” for the program in the future.
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“We’ll be looking into how we can fund this program long-term and hopefully help even more families in the future,” Hidalgo said.
The pilot program was approved by the Harris County Commissioners Court in June 2023. Several jurisdictions have tried out basic guaranteed income programs with varying results.