La-Kingya Singleton almost didn’t answer the call. It was after 5pm and from an 800- phone number. “I thought it was a robocall,” she said.
But it wasn’t. It was someone from the In Her Hands initiative – the largest guaranteed-income pilot program in the southern US, and which focuses on Black women. The caller told her she had been selected, by lottery, as one of 650 women to receive an average of $850 a month, for two years, no strings attached – a concept known as guaranteed income.