‘Let’s see what works’: Nonprofit begins second guaranteed-income program on Westside

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For some Atlanta residents, living paycheck to paycheck would be an improvement. In fact, studies show many Americans cannot afford a $500 emergency.

This summer, the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund started its second guaranteed-income program that provides 200 women with $1,000 each month.

The three-year program falls under its In Her Hands initiative and is funded by a $6.2 million grant from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.

Eligible participants must live in the Westside neighborhoods of Vine City or English Avenue.

While it is too soon to know the impact on the latest recipients, the GRO Fund says its first batch of participants — who concluded their program in September — reaped notable benefits.

“Participants in our program are more likely to have financial stability, lower levels of debt, higher levels of savings [and] higher levels of financial well-being and are less likely to need to use predatory financial services,” said Hope Wollensack, founder and executive director of the GRO Fund. She predicts similar trends in the second cohort.

The women also reported better mental and physical health, and “increased optimism about their future,” Wollensack told Atlanta Business Chronicle.

The concept of guaranteed income is not new. In a 1967 speech, Martin Luther King Jr. called it a simple and effective solution to abolish poverty. He also noted, even then, that guaranteed income had its critics who thought it might destroy a recipient’s initiative or sense of responsibility.

Wollensack said she has heard the criticism, too. But she contends high levels of poverty cannot only be an “individual failure,” but perhaps there is “something broader happening in our economy that we should be working on. … Let’s see what works and be willing to grow.”

The median income for a female resident of Vine City with a year-round, full-time job is $29,628, according to data from the Atlanta Regional Commission.

“There is significant economic need in the community, and we hope that this program can help to start to bridge some of that inequality and provide a cushion when paired with other programs which we’re lucky the Westside has” in affordable housing and job training, Wollensack said.

One of those job-training programs, Westside Works, is operated by CareerRise, which also received a $6.2 million multiyear grant from the Blank Foundation as part of the foundation’s largest investment in support of Atlanta’s Westside.

CareerRise is using the funding to build out training programs for specific sectors including construction, health care, hospitality and information technology.

“We’re open to do what an employer needs as far as developing a training program. The [Blank Foundation] grant really enabled that,” John Helton, president and CEO of CareerRise, told Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Instead of taking a “train and pray” approach — train participants and pray they get a job — Helton said CareerRise and its partners are “front-loading all of our training programs with the employers” to make sure there is a position waiting for them when they finish.

The organization is also aiming for more than the baseline metrics of employment.

“We’re trying to look at measures that are more geared toward economic mobility because we know that is the real issue,” Helton told the Chronicle.

CareerRise is beginning to partner with other organizations to measure the longer-term impact of job training such as job retention, whether the position had benefits, and opportunities to move into management.

“All those things that look at the viability of the training program — that’s what we’re more concerned with than can we get this person a job,” Helton said. “That’s one step, but that’s not the sole goal of what we’re trying to do on the Westside.”