Chicago Taps Direct Cash Charity to Give Residents $500 a Month
GiveDirectly will run the city’s guaranteed basic income pilot, amid a surge in cash assistance programs.
Guaranteed basic income programs became far more popular during the pandemic. Chicago’s will rely on GiveDirectly to administer its program.
Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A nonprofit that originally focused on giving cash to impoverished people in Africa will soon be delivering money to poor residents of Chicago, in one of the largest tests of a guaranteed basic income program in the US.
GiveDirectly is administering a program that will give $500 a month to each of 5,000 households in Chicago as soon as the end of June. The city is using $31.5 million from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act for the year-long pilot, and hoping the payments will help it recover faster from the pandemic.