Understanding Marin County’s Universal Basic Income Pilot Program to Help Foster Youth

Marin County recently began rolling out a guaranteed income pilot program to further support current and former foster youth in the county. To learn more about this initiative, we recently sat down with Bree Marchman, Division Director for Marin County Children and Family Services.

Interview with Bree Marchman about Marin County’s UBI program for foster youth

Matt Kaplan, AFS 

So to start, Bree, can you give a quick overview of yourself and your role? 

Bree 

Sure. My name is Bree Marchman. I’m the Division Director of Children and Family Services here in Marin. So I get to do all kinds of fun stuff to help share help make sure we’re moving our programs forward and coming up with new programs to serve youth. 

Matt 

Great. So I understand that Marin recently is about to launch a guaranteed income pilot program. Can you talk a little bit more about what this program entails? 

Bree 

Certainly, we actually envisioned it particularly around housing support. Many people probably already know that it’s very expensive to live in Marin, housing being one of the largest expenses, especially for youth. And so we knew our youth were struggling to find apartments they could live in that were safe, that were near school, near family and friends, near work, near their communities. And we wanted to keep them in Marin, because a lot of our youth are actually moving out of county, because it’s so expensive to stay. And so that was distancing them from their communities and their families. So we had an opportunity with some American Rescue Plan Act funds to do a pilot to support Ex-foster youth. So we decided we would focus on Ex-foster youth living in Marin County, to help support them in their housing costs so that they can stay and remain in Marion County and hopefully impact other areas of their life, including being able to keep jobs, being able to stay in school, being able to maintain housing, and maybe most importantly, increase their well-being because we all know, when you’re stressed about finances, it’s impacting every area of your life. 

Matt 

Are there specific stipulations of how youth can use the money? 

Bree 

There’s not, we did envision it to operate like a Basic Income program in the sense that we’re not requiring receipts or any sort of verification of what the funds are used for. While the general hope is that it will defray the cost of housing, youth may also be using it to have some savings to fix their car to, you know, travel to visit a family member they haven’t seen in a long time, things that are going to contribute to that overall improvement in well-being, and hopefully mental health and stabilize them. So other areas of their life, when stressors are coming up, they’re better able to deal with that.  

Matt 

How many people will be eligible for start? 

Bree 

Well, we didn’t get a ridiculous amount of funds. And so we did have to kind of keep the program small. So we have 11 participants right now, the hope would be if it goes well, and we’re able to show some promising outcomes, maybe we can look toward expanding it in the future. 

Matt 

When will the program start? And is there an end date? 

Bree 

Yes, it’s a 12-month program. And so we just started this month in August was the first disbursement of funds. So very exciting youth are getting funds now and it will continue for the next 12 months. 

Matt 

And after the 12-month period, how will the county know that the program has been successful or unsuccessful? What are you tracking? 

Bree 

So we created a survey that participants complete and we’ve already had our initial survey done by all the youth and the hope was to have it at the beginning, so we would get a baseline of kind of how they’re functioning now and what kinds of issues are important and challenging to them now – try it again, at the halfway mark at six months, and then again at 12 months to see, have we seen some incremental changes? Hopefully, we’re seeing some significant impacts and outcomes by the 12-month mark. And the survey is really looking at all the issues that we know youth are struggling with:.  

Are they able to maintain their housing? Did they have to change housing or not? Do the funds help them stabilize in their housing? Same thing with employment? Were they able to maintain employment? Did they have to change employment and you know, we’ve heard stories sometimes if you’re saying well, I don’t’ know, my car broke down and I didn’t have enough cash to fix it and so I wasn’t able to get to work and then I got fired. You know, it’s these kinds of, they seem like small things but they snowball into all areas of life when you’re kind of living at that, you know, month to month level.  

So the real hope is that, education is another example we’re asking youth in the survey about, were you able to start going to school, were able to stay in school, you know that these funds are hopefully helping them be able to reach those goals so that they can eventually access higher paying employment, and stabilize further, we also put in some questions around well-being because we also acknowledge that not worrying about money might allow them to do some other things that contribute to their well-being. 

We did look a lot at relationships, are youth able to spend time with friends and family, were they able to travel to see family members that maybe they wouldn’t have been able to afford to see before? Were they able to do something for themselves, you know, spend time with friends go out to a movie? While these things seem small, when finances are really tight, obviously, youth are not able to do as much and so maybe these funds are helping them access some of those activities that contribute to their well-being. So we’re hoping the survey will show over time, some stability, some improvements, and maybe a reduction in their stress. 

Matt 

I’m curious, there’s many different ways that I’m sure that the county is current is supporting youth, is thinking about supporting youth. Why this particular model? 

Bree 

Well, we actually partnered with the Marin Community Foundation to apply for the statewide pilot, universal basic income pilot that they’re doing, about to do right now. And we spent a lot of time with the Community Foundation, because they’re already running a universal basic income program called MOMentum. And it’s focusing on low-income moms of color in Marin. And they were already telling us about some great outcomes that they were seeing with their population in their program.  

And then when we spent time working on our application, for the statewide pilot, which we were not ultimately selected, it really just kind of raised our awareness about what a big impact a universal basic income program can have, especially around the idea of prevention.  

You know, several of the youth in our program right now are parenting youth. So we’re also looking at how do we prevent child abuse for the next generation by supporting the current generation, and ex- foster youth in particular, are already prone to a lot of really challenging and negative outcomes just by virtue of the trauma that they’ve experienced in their lives. So they’re more likely to be involved in justice system, they’re more likely to experience mental health issues, substance abuse issues, domestic violence issues, they’re more likely to have challenges in obtaining higher levels of education.  

So this seems like the right population to invest in. Maybe I’m a little biased, but that it supports a population that’s already vulnerable. And just giving them that little extra boost. Because, you know, the pilot program that we’re doing, it’s only $1,000 a month. And, you know, in a high-cost county like Marin, that’s a third of your rent, let alone all the other expenses of life. We know it’s not going to solve everything. But if you can just make that little bit of difference. I think that would be huge. 

Matt 

How does this program align with other programs initiatives, both at the county and at the state level? 

Bree 

Well, like I mentioned before, the Marin Community Foundation is already doing a Basic Income program. And so it’s very similar values and looking at how do we how do we lift up families and youth who are living at a more of a subsistence level and help them kind of become more self-sufficient, get them to that next level.  

And then California through the Department of Social Services is running Basic Income pilot this year, I believe it’s still in the planning phase. But I think there were seven recipients of different organizations throughout the state that are going to be running their own basic income pilots. And the two populations of focus for that are ex-foster youth and pregnant individuals. So they’re also looking toward the idea of prevention and support. So we’re very much aligned in the population. We’re talking about the approach.  

I think, California in particular, and certainly other programs across the state are really starting to look at basic income as a way to solve a lot of the challenges that we see with vulnerable populations. You know, just a little bit of extra support. Something that families can count on can really reduce their reliance on other safety net programs that may have a lot of red tape involved in them. And it’s nice to be able to give a family, here’s something that has no red tape. And then you can decide what you need it for- providing autonomy and choice where they may not be there before. 

Absolutely. And I think that was one of the one of the bits of outcome data that we got from the Marin Community Foundation was that the parents in their pilot have said multiple times, the idea that they are being trusted to make those decisions without a bunch of verifications and “give me receipts”, like without those things, they feel more empowered, like “you trust me to know what’s right for my family.” And that’s a good feeling. 

Matt 

Amazing. Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground and you’ve had a great overview. If folks are interested in learning more, where can they go for more information? 

Bree 

Really, they should just contact me. I can give you my email address, and you can share it with whomever is interested in learning more. It’s early days, so we don’t know yet what we’re going to find. But we have a pretty good idea that it’s going to be very beneficial to our youth. And I really do hope that the next step will be a continuation and expansion perhaps, because there were youth we had to say no to in this in the application period. And we would love to be able to say yes to more so. 

Matt 

Great. Is there anything else you’d like to add? 

Bree 

Well, I just appreciate you wanting to highlight this program, because I really feel like programs like this are really the future of prevention and the future of support for vulnerable populations. And, you know, I think it’s already well established in the medical field that spending money on prevention really saves you money on the treatment end. And in social services, I don’t know that we’ve quite gotten there yet. And we really need to think more upstream and this is exactly one of the ways that we can do that. 

Matt 

Great. Well, really interesting to hear more about this looking forward to the results. Once you have some more data and some more insights and thank you for your time today.