LA Community Colleges test out guaranteed basic income for students

The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) announced on Tuesday that it’s selected 250 students to receive $1,000 each month for one year.

The program is called BOOST, or Building Outstanding Opportunities for Students to Thrive. The goal is to help students who have struggled to make ends meet not have to choose between finishing their degrees or working to put food on the table or pay rent.

“They face financial insecurity, many of them having to make a choice between going to school or getting a job [and] many are the sole providers for their families,” said Alberto Román, interim chancellor for the nine-campus district.

Administrators backing the college program say it’s doubly effective because it helps people take care of their own and their family’s basic needs while supporting them on their way to earning a college degree.

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All student participants are interested in health careers and struggle to meet living expenses and stay in school. Administrators said they focused on health programs because that industry has many positions to fill and organizations often don’t have enough qualified applicants.

Students have a lot of discretion

There are no strings attached to the payments. Officials say the first debit cards with the funds were sent this week and the 250 students selected should all receive their cards by Thanksgiving.

“I have to put it away for my next month's rent so that I can make sure that I'm secure, and my kids are secure,” said Brenda Olazava, a second-year student at L.A. City College selected for the program.

According to LACCD, about half of its students are “low income.”

Olazava said she works 18 hours a week at the front desk for her campus’ counseling office.

There are other programs to learn from

Officials say the total amount set aside for the program is about $4 million; just over $3 million comes from the Edythe and Eli Broad Foundation, and $867,000 from the California Community Foundation.

The city of L.A. created a similar guaranteed basic income three years ago that gave $1,000 each month to 3,000 people.

“We have been advising the community colleges on the design [of the program],” said Abigail Marquez, general manager of the City of L.A.’s Community Investment for Families Department, which oversaw the city's guaranteed income program.

LACCD is using the research organization the city used to study their program’s effectiveness, and the college district is also using the same vendor the city used to create and manage debit card disbursements.

A report released earlier this year looking at the city's program found that participants who received the monthly $1,000 payments were more able to cover emergency expenses and had a greater sense of financial well-being compared to people in the study who didn’t receive the payments.

There will be research

About $500,000 of donated funds will be spent to pay researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of the program through various means, including surveys of the participating students.

“One of the recommendations from the research of our program was to look at how you can couple guaranteed income with other supportive services or other types of programs,” Marquez said. In other words, while the money helps, students need other kinds of support as well to stay on track, like career counseling and food pantries, among other things provided by the campuses.

It's stress relief

The program’s supporters said that trying to pay living expenses in Southern California on limited income while attending college full or part time often undermines the type of recreation and leisure activities that middle class or people with means take for granted.

“Many of our families are struggling to even do that, to spend a Sunday afternoon to take their child to the park,” Marquez said.

That’s what Olazava said she wants to do with one of the payments: have a nice dinner and drive to a holiday themed location with her two children.

“Even if it’s just a weekend, just be able to give them something more than just seeing mom [do] work and school,” Olazava said.