Denver’s basic income pilot — which first started payments in fall 2022 — focused on over 800 Coloradans experiencing homelessness, including people living in cars, temporary shelters, the outdoors, or other non-fixed living situations. Participants like Laws were given direct cash payments, no strings attached, and could spend the money on whatever they needed.
Denver released the project’s one-year report on June 18, showing that 45% of participants secured their own house or apartment after receiving basic income for 10 months. They also experienced fewer emergency room visits, nights spent in a hospital or a temporary shelter, and jail stays. The report estimates that this reduction in public service use saved the city $589,214.
Good point and cheers for a thoughtful reply. :) The article states that two private foundations paid out about $10 million to finance the pilot program. The city of Denver seems to have no direct investment in this program, but it’s unclear from the article. It states that State university students did data gathering during the project and paid up to $30.00 for each response from stipend recipients. Given the above, I would respectfully suggest that these self-reports exchanged for money may be biased, confirmation bias could be a huge factor. The university is the only entity that has released their findings so far, which means that the only metric we have is the pilot project director’s opinion that, to paraphrase, “It went so well, we need more funding!”