New York mayoral candidate proposes pandemic-era monthly checks
New York mayoral candidate proposes pandemic-era monthly checks to ‘end homelessness’
New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams made establishing a guaranteed basic income for all residents a campaign promise in her bid for mayor.
Adams proposed creating the largest guaranteed basic income program in the country. Her plan, NYC’s Guarantee for the Next Generation, is focused on providing checks to homeless mothers and families with children aged 0 to 5 and young adults exiting the foster care system at risk for homelessness aged 18 to 24.
Beneficiaries would receive three years of financial support in the form of an initial $2,500 payment, followed by a $1,000 monthly payment, and then regular $500 payments.
The program would reach 21,000 New Yorkers struggling with housing security and cost the city around $430 million over two years. It would be funded by social impact bonds, through which private investors would finance the early costs and then the government would repay them. Adams said the program could save the city over $1.13 billion per year in shelter costs if 63% of recipients were able to find their own housing.
As the state’s costs for taking care of asylum seekers have risen, the city’s fiscal 2025 budget has ballooned, leading to spending cuts for key programs.
“Despite the upward revisions in revenue and spending in the Adopted Budget, the Comptroller’s Office continues to project that the City’s financial plan understates City revenues and—to a greater extent—expenditures, clouding the City’s financial picture and leading to larger gap estimates than presented by the Mayor in each year of the financial plan,” New York City Comptroller Brad Lander wrote in August 2024.
The proposal seems to be inspired by Adams’s 2024 initiative that created a program in New York City that provided pregnant mothers a guaranteed basic income. Approximately 1 in 8 babies in the city are born homeless, but Adams’s program, which allocated $1.5 million in funding, found that it accelerated the “transition into permanent housing” for homeless mothers. Within nine months of participation, 63% of mothers were able to move into permanent housing.
A guaranteed income program has become a popular talking point for Democrats in recent years. When former presidential candidate Andrew Yang ran for mayor in 2021, he promised to provide some New Yorkers $2,000 a year with no strings attached.
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In New York City, affordable housing is a major issue. Earlier this week, a New York Post article found that during former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 11-year tenure, housing prices soared by 77% and rent prices rose by 52%.
Cuomo has joined the 2025 mayoral race and is leading in the polls.
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