CHICAGO — Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has announced a $42 million guaranteed income pilot for suburban county residents, which she said will be one plank of an ambitious multiyear plan to tackle racial and economic inequities using federal COVID-19 stimulus funds.
Preckwinkle has offered few details about the cash assistance program, but its total would surpass a similar $31.5 million pilot in Chicago as well as most guaranteed income experiments across the U.S. Preckwinkle has said selected residents will get monthly payments for at least a year with no strings attached.
In pitching the program during a City Club of Chicago speech last week, the board president — who filed nominating petitions Monday to run for reelection this year — evoked the late writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin: “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” She railed against how “racist stereotypes” have allowed the idea of free cash payments to only recently gain steam as means to lift people out of poverty.
