By Adele Peters, Fast Company, August 6, 2021
For the last six months, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that works with people experiencing homelessness tried a simple experiment: If it gave some people a small basic income of $500 a month, how much could it help?
The nonprofit, called Miracle Messages, pairs unhoused people with volunteer “buddies” who make weekly calls and texts and offer support. (The volunteers also use social media to reconnect people experiencing homelessness with family members with whom they’ve lost touch.) The volunteers realized that even small amounts of money could make a difference in these people’s lives. “We were just hearing more and more from our volunteers that hey, my unhoused friend is just in need of a few hundred dollars here and there to address these problems that are really stumbling blocks from helping them get housed or stabilized,” says Kevin Adler, CEO and founder of Miracle Messages.
Inspired by a successful program in Vancouver that gave $7,000 cash transfers to homeless participants, the San Francisco nonprofit decided to try the same thing on a smaller scale. With a limited amount of money from donors for the pilot—$50,000—it decided to give 15 people $500 a month for 6 months.
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