There is no doubt that housing and homelessness are issues our country can no longer afford to ignore. Unaffordable rent, barriers to home ownership, and growing homelessness throughout our country are real issues families and individuals are facing all across the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare just how precarious housing can be for so many. While eviction moratoriums and rental assistance programs were important stopgaps that helped secure housing for many, there has also been growing awareness of an even more promising solution: giving people cash.

Our organization, Springboard To Opportunities, provides programs and services to families living in affordable housing to help them reach their goals in life, work, and school. Our model is guided by our radically, resident-driven philosophy, meaning every program or resource that we offer is from our families themselves. Rather than taking a top-down approach and assuming that we know what is best for families, we ask families directly what it is they need to feel secure, safe in place, and able to reach their goals.

Since Springboard To Opportunities' start, we have worked to listen to families in our communities through focus groups, community discussions, and one-on-one conversations. These conversations have been the basis of all of Springboard's programming and strategies, including our work on guaranteed income through The Magnolia Mother’s Trust, the longest running guaranteed income program in the United States that provides $1,000 per month for 12 months to 100 Black mothers living in affordable housing, to ensure everything we provide is based on the expressed needs of families and developed, implemented, and evaluated in partnership with families themselves. 

In these conversations, we would hear again and again from mothers that what they needed was not another voucher or program, but cash. Our current, punitive welfare system is riddled with paternalistic measures, such as linking benefits to work requirements or only providing funding for specific, predetermined needs. These measures are based on false assumptions and cultural narratives that so often surround low-income women and especially Black women. 

While there is clear evidence for the economic benefits and security programs like The Magnolia Mother’s Trust provide for families, The Magnolia Mother’s Trust also provides a model for a benefits program that is centered on trust and dignity. We trusted our mothers when they told us what they needed was cash, and we trust them to be the experts on their own lives, knowing how to spend the money to best care for their families and meet their needs.

When families are given cash, they spend it on necessities and basic needs, such as rent and utilities, that their family needs to survive. That money goes back into the local economy supporting businesses and workers on the ground in their community, providing better opportunities for everyone involved. Policies like the expanded Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit are the start of a real opportunity to reshape the current social safety net system and provide benefits that not only support the economic security of families, but are based in dignity and the real lives of families instead of paternalistic notions of deservingness. 

While it might be tempting to believe that more housing vouchers or rental assistance programs are the solution we need, when we talk to families themselves, we hear a different story. Now is the time to honor their voices and stories and provide solutions that will work.  

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