Fewer than 10% of Marylanders live below the poverty line, but in Baltimore, the ratio is much higher, with one in five people living in poverty. There is no shortage of reasons why the rate in the state’s largest city is stubbornly high. Often, poverty simply begets more poverty. Individuals born into certain city neighborhoods will have a tougher time finding employment opportunities and decent housing, health care and transportation, and they are more likely to be impacted by crime and substance abuse. Those living in poverty are disproportionately African American and female, their circumstances part of a long legacy of discrimination, worsened in many ways by the COVID-19 pandemic. All of this raises a critical question: What would it take to turn things around and open doors and opportunities for people lacking the privilege that provides an easier path for some?
Here’s one promising proposition: Giving those in need a modest helping hand — not a windfall, of course, but something that would allow them to pull their lives together or at least address some lingering barrier to advancement. This week, Baltimore moves forward with its version of a guaranteed income program. The experimental plan will pick 200 qualifying young families to receive $1,000 a month for two years. At Mayor Brandon Scott’s urging, the $4.8 million Baltimore Young Families Success Fund was financed mostly through the city’s $641 million share of the federal American Rescue Plan aid.
Public reaction to such ventures is often polarizing, with many political conservatives predisposed to see government aid — whether in the form of food stamps, Medicaid payments or Temporary Cash Assistance — as a handout to the shiftless. But a number of urban centers across the United States have been pursuing programs similar to the one Baltimore is launching with some success. In Stockton, California, for example, a universal basic income program that was started in 2019 has found that full-time employment rose among participants, as did their financial, physical and emotional health. That should not be regarded as shocking. Nonprofit advocacy groups have been successfully helping families with more targeted help for years. Sometimes, the difference between holding a job or not comes down to the ability to afford decent child care or make a car payment or buy appropriate clothes.
