Universal Cash Assistance for Low-Income Families through Rise Up Cambridge
Determined to center equity and access, Rise Up Cambridge is the first non-lottery based cash assistance program in the country. Unique in both its structure and size, the city of Cambridge dedicated $18 million in ARPA funds—its second largest ARPA investment—toward a guaranteed income program open to all Cambridge families with children living with incomes at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty line without restrictions. Nearly all of the City’s 2,000 households meeting these criteria are participating in the program, which grew out of a deep collaboration between the Mayor’s Office, the Cambridge Community Foundation (CCF), and the City’s anti-poverty agency Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee (CEOC). Former Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, who championed the program, says that its core message is, “We trust you, we see you, and we know that you know best how to use money, and we trust you to figure out how to use the money as you see fit.”
Why this investment?
Located across the Charles River from Boston, Cambridge is home to both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with many tech startups attracting young college graduates. These factors, along with insufficient new affordable housing, have contributed to an affordable rental housing crisis. Cambridge is the most expensive city in the Boston metro, with the typical 1-bedroom apartment renting at $3,000 per month.
Providing Cambridge families with financial stability and dignity was central to the agenda of the three partner entities even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic hit, the Mayor’s Office restarted the Mayor’s Disaster Relief Fund, quickly raising and distributing more than $4 million in direct cash assistance to thousands of residents. CCF additionally launched a COVID Relief Fund which distributed $1.9M to individuals and nonprofits, while CEOC worked with families on issues ranging from food security to rental and utility assistance. The public, nonprofit and philanthropic effort enabled each player to bring their unique strengths to the table for a successful collaboration, paving a path to scaling the program.
Buoyed by the success of the Mayor’s Disaster Relief Fund, the Mayor’s Office collaborated with CCF, CEOC, and Mayors for Guaranteed Income (MGI) to launch the Cambridge Recurring Income for Success and Empowerment (RISE) guaranteed income pilot. In September 2021, the pilot began distributing $500 a month for 18 months to 130 households headed by single caretakers. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that the participants in the RISE program experienced increases in income stability and a reduction in housing cost burden and food insecurity as compared to the control group.
Building on the success of this philanthropically-funded pilot, a year later, the City announced that it would allocate ARPA funds for an expanded program. The Cambridge City Council intentionally prioritized using ARPA funds for programs that were ineligible for funding through the City’s general budget. Specifically, Massachusetts’ Anti-Aid Amendment prevents cities from using general funds to provide money to people without a service exchange. As such, ARPA provided an opportunity to expand the guaranteed income pilot using public funds without running afoul of state restrictions.
Community support—from both partner organizations and Cambridge residents—was key to the City Council’s approval of the expansion that came to be Rise Up Cambridge, according to former Mayor Siddiqui. The mobilization of community partners, including affordable housing developers, CCF, CEOC and others, as well as direct testimony from Cambridge RISE recipients, resulted in a unanimous vote from the City Council to dedicate ARPA funds to the guaranteed income expansion.
What is this investment?
What makes Rise Up Cambridge unique is that there is no lottery: every household that meets the eligibility criteria can enroll in the program. To be eligible, a household must have children at or under age 21 and an income at or below 250 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), or $57,575 for a single parent with two children living in Cambridge in 2022. This threshold was selected to ensure that all who applied to the program could participate, recognizing that economic insecurity extends far beyond the poverty line. The Mayor’s Office and CEOC conducted focus groups with nonprofits and worked with the community to design the program.
Out of about 2,000 eligible families, the Mayor’s Office and its partners were able to enroll 1,922 households comprising 6,450 residents to receive $500 per month for 18 months. Nearly half of eligible households were well below the 250 percent FPL threshold, with close to half of families at or below 100 percent of FPL. Despite a majority white population in the City, almost 80 percent of people eligible for Rise Up Cambridge were people of color. Black residents were 40 percent of the population eligible for the program while only 10 percent of the City’s population. Further, CCF’s research found a startling—and widening—income gap between households headed by a single mother and all other households. Families headed by single mothers made up more than 43 percent of eligible households and 47 percent of households meeting or falling below the FPL. It is these types of households— those experiencing racial, gendered, and class-based setbacks—that Rise Up Cambridge aims to uplift.
Situating guaranteed income as an extra tool to help families, Rise Up Cambridge was designed as a supplement, rather than a replacement, to the City’s current programs. The program’s goals include providing more and easier opportunities for families to access immediate relief to improve their quality of life, addressing the growing economic inequality within the City, and giving residents the tools to improve their livelihoods.
According to CCF President Geeta Pradhan, pairing cash transfers with other programs, such as expanded child tax credit, has helped meet the immediate needs of the community. As a next step to ensure family stability, CCF is working towards longer-term goals of impacting economic mobility and social cohesion throughout Cambridge.
Centering equity in the program
Designing the program to make cash support available to anyone who needed it, rather than being structured as a lottery system, was a key way in which Cambridge built equity into the design of the pilot. The partners prioritized centering families with the highest needs in the community in their outreach process, conducting targeted outreach to the City’s diverse demographic groups. Specifically, the City worked with 60 community-based organizations—including affordable housing sites, public schools, the public health department, family shelters, and barber shops—to make sure that flyers were distributed as widely as possible. They also hosted informational drop-in hours for Cambridge residents and translated the application into multiple languages, such as Amharic, Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish. Working with the disbursement partner, the City was able to determine if people had failed to complete the application process and provided direct outreach to assist people with the process. There were residents who were eligible for the program but missed the application deadline, or did not provide the necessary information before applications closed.
While the absence of a lottery was a key aspect of equitable program design, it’s important to note that the program’s 250 percent of FPL income threshold does not capture all economically insecure residents. According to the Economic Policy Institute’s Living Wage Calculator, Cambridge’s living wage in 2022 was about 500 percent of the FPL, or $115,150 for a family of three.
Outcomes to date
Rise Up Cambridge fund distribution began in August 2023. While the City does not yet have a full evaluation of the program, there are several early success stories from residents who have used the funds to support their families. Pradhan notes that participants have shared that they have enrolled themselves or their children in counseling services, gone back to school, paid for childcare services, enrolled children in extracurricular activities, and made transformative family planning decisions.
In fall of 2023, the City Council approved $500,000 from Free Cash to the Public Investment Fund Executive Extraordinary Expenditures account to support an evaluation of the Rise Up Cambridge Cash Assistance for Families Program. The evaluation conducted by MDRC will enter on four main categories of outcomes: (a) outcomes related to financial security, (b) economic mobility, (c) wellbeing, and (d) self-efficacy and sense of agency. The study will look at these outcomes at the household and individual (i.e., adults and children) levels. A variety of data collection methods and analyses will inform the study including in person interviews, focus groups, enrollment data, surveys and a research advisory council. A final report is anticipated in 2025.
Towards transformative change
To Pradhan, real transformative change will come through a combination of Rise Up Cambridge’s unconditional cash program, the maintenance of state and federal benefits, and policy changes related to the cliff effects on income limits for benefits and updating the FPLs in keeping with the more realistic cost of living needed to meet basic needs. Such an effort would go a long way towards creating a safety net and ensuring the right to dignity, equity, and justice in Cambridge and beyond. Conversations are underway around what happens in winter 2025 when Rise Up concludes.
Acknowledgements
Support for this case study was provided in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Policies for Action program. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.