About
The SDEC GIP provides 150 families within four zip codes in San Diego County. Families receive $500 in monthly cash payments for 24 months. Residents in these areas predominately identify as people of color, have higher rates of unemployment, low income, food insecurity, cases of COVID-19, and contend with high rates of environmental stressors such as air pollution. Families selected have at least one child in the family 12 years old or younger, with a maximum income of $53,000 for a family of four.
Research & Evaluation
In partnership with Mayors for Guaranteed Income and the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania, JFS is conducting quantitative and qualitative research on the impact of guaranteed income on a family’s physical functioning, mental health, income volatility, spending, consumption, employment, education, family dynamics and parenting, stress and coping, hope and mattering, household food security, COVID-19 variables, and childcare accessibility. The pilot provides immediate benefits to those in need and the information gathered will be added to a growing database of evidence showing the impact of providing a guaranteed income.
We are not currently taking new applications.
If you have any questions regarding the Jewish Family Service Economic Mobility programs, please contact us at [email protected] or at (858) 637-7350.
What would you do with an extra $500 a month?
150 San Diegans got a chance to find out in JFS’s San Diego For Every Child Guaranteed Income pilot program.
This program was designed to test a concept called guaranteed income, where people receive monthly payments. Unlike other aid — rent or tuition assistance, utility and food vouchers, or material donations — recipients had full control over how to use this income. One benefit of the pilot: A chance to think, plan, and be proactive.
Featured on the front page of The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Sunday edition, this in-depth report follows Saundra, a single mom of three boys, working multiple jobs and struggling to make ends meet. Read more to learn if Saundra’s family was in a better place after participating:
“An Invitation to Dream” mini-documentary highlights the experience
“It (Guaranteed Income Program) helped me to not only get caught up on my bills, but to get those bills where they’re supposed to be.”
San Diego’s first guaranteed income program is a few months in, and it is already making a difference in many lives. One hundred and fifty families are receiving $500 a month with no strings attached. The families chosen for the guaranteed income program come from four specific neighborhoods: Encanto, Paradise Hills, San Ysidro and National City. All the families have a child under the age of 12 in the home. San Diego’s guaranteed income project began distributing payments in March and is being administered by the local non-profit, Jewish Family Service.
“The purpose and philosophy behind guaranteed income is that we trust the families to meet their basic needs if we just give them the resources and allow them to self-determine, take up their agency and spend it on the core necessities they need in this pandemic and beyond,” said Khea Pollard, Director of Economic Mobility and Opportunity, Jewish Family Service. “Forty-one percent of these families are spending the money on food. Twenty-eight percent on household essentials. And then 20% on transportation,” said Pollard.
