What would you buy with $750 a month? For unhoused Californians, it was everything

Can putting money directly in the hands of people experiencing homelessness make a difference? A new California study on basic income suggests it can.

Ben Henwood, a professor at the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, partnered with the nonprofit Miracle Messages to give 103 people in the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles County $750 per month for a year. The six-month report is preliminary, but Henwood said the findings provide insight into ways to help address the problem.

"They're just segments of the population given the income disparities, that despite having jobs and working, they're not making enough to just afford basic needs and they're getting priced out of the housing market," he said.

Miracle Messages CEO and founder Kevin F. Adler said the $2.1 million study grew out of a pilot program from the nonprofit that gave 14 unhoused people $500 per month. In that study, he said the funds donated funds allowed two-thirds of the people to secure housing.

"What we've seen is most of the money being spent on a mix of housing and food security," Adler said. "We've also had folks use money for family emergencies, child care, and other basic needs."

None of the funding for this study came from the government, Henwood noted. Google's nonprofit arm, Kimberly Lynch, Scott Layne and the Homeless Policy Research Institute funded the study.

People purchased transportation, donated money to nonprofits

Just over 750 people were enrolled in the new study and 103 were chosen at random to be eligible for the $750 a month. On average, participants were 47 years old, and 78% were minorities.

"A lot of ways they sort of resembled the overall homeless population here in Los Angeles in terms of their breakdown," Henwood added.

Nearly a third of the people used the money for food and roughly 20% used it for housing; 11% to 12% used it for clothing and transportation; while 6% used it for health care and 13% used it for other expenses, as determined by the research group.

Henwood said the funds enabled people to be more resourceful; they fixed broken vehicles, caught up on debt and, purchased memberships to sustain their lives.

"It was a lot of different resourcefulness, but clearly for some people, it helped them become more financially independent, using those funds to put themselves in a better situation," he said.

The greatest change was the number of people who left shelters and were able to secure housing because of the program. Of the 30% who started the program unsheltered, only 12% remained unsheltered at the six-month point.

"The money has reduced the number of unsheltered, the time unsheltered and made it so people have less food insecurity," Adler said.

A closer look:LA's plan to solve homelessness has moved thousands off the streets. But is it working?

Guaranteed income programs across the country

Guaranteed income programs aren't a novel concept. Cities such as Chicago, Stockton, California, and others have given residents a guaranteed income to use how they see fit and quickly saw results - people obtained resources and items they couldn't previously.

"I would hope that this would support more use of basic income as a way to just help people who are living in poverty," Henwood said.

According to Standford University's Basic Income Lab, there are at least 50 active basic income experiments in the U.S. The lab was started in 2017 by Juliana Bidadanure, a philosophy professor, to study the concept and related policies.

In Congress, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a Democrat, reintroduced legislation in September to create a federal guaranteed income three-year pilot program. If passed and signed by President Joe Biden, the program would provide 20,000 Americans with a monthly income that equals the "fair market rent for a 2-bedroom home" in their respective zip codes, according to the bill.

Adler hoped more localities would take note of the study and other pilots to legislate more guaranteed income programs.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said that 653,104 people were experiencing homelessness, up 12% from 2022.

"We're spending hundreds of millions on homelessness and it's not getting better," Adler said. "If we're able to give money directly to people experiencing homelessness and they're using it better than we could, we need to look at how we spend funds and address this."

Contributing: Paul Davidson, Amritpal Kaur Sandhu-Longoria, Claire Thornton; USA TODAY.