A new basic income program is set to give away tens of millions of dollars in America’s most densely populated city.
New York City has allocated $53 million to give to migrants who are currently being put up in hotels, reports the New York Post.
More than 150,000 people seeking asylum have arrived in the city from the southern border in the last two years, triggering a billion-dollar crisis that has sent officials scrambling.
The new pilot program will hand out pre-paid credit cards to 500 migrant families.
Each recipient gets about $350 a month to spend on food and baby supplies, which is more money than low income residents are given through the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), reports Newsweek.
“[Mayor] Adams has warned that the migrant crisis could ‘destroy New York City’ and cautioned that the nation’s largest city is at a ‘breaking point.’
The mayor has also received backlash for his handling of the immigration issue, facing disapproval over his decisions to house migrants at various hotels in the city and to relocate some of them to a Brooklyn high school ahead of a winter storm, among other things.”
If the pilot is deemed a success, it will be rolled out to all 15,000 families staying in New York City hotels.
Mayor Adams’ administration, which is asking the state for $4.6 billion to cover the cost of the crisis, says the program is cheaper than the food delivery service that has been running since the emergency began.
All of the migrant families in the program will have to sign an affidavit stating they will only use the cards for their intended purposes.
New York’s pilot program follows the launch of dozens of guaranteed income programs across the US, designed to test the benefits of giving direct aid to people who are struggling to make ends meet.
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