The Williams were one of the families selected to participate in the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission\u2019s program that provided no-strings-attached monthly stipends of $500 to 150 families over the course of a year, starting in July 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Paying down that utility debt was one of the main priorities for the Williams family during their time receiving the stipends \u2014 especially for Ariel, whose multiple sclerosis flares up in the Fresno summer heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were able to pay that debt to zero,\u201d she told Fresnoland following a news conference Tuesday, where program leaders highlighted a newly-released study on the results of the pilot. \u201cIt\u2019s like we were starting our account all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n
That report shows that the payments also helped lift many of the other 150 participating families out of debt, as well as had other benefits like reducing food insecurity and alleviating stress for parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile it cannot overcome every barrier,\u201d said Amber Crowell, an associate professor at Fresno State that led the program\u2019s evaluation, \u201cand it cannot alone eliminate poverty, it\u2019s an important part of the anti-poverty agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though guaranteed basic income has been studied all over the United States, Fresno\u2019s pilot marks one of the first to include rural residents.<\/p>\n
Half the program\u2019s participants \u2014 including the Williams family \u2014 were from Huron, a small town in rural Fresno County. The other 75 participants hailed from the 93706 ZIP code in the city\u2019s southwest area.<\/p>\n
The two communities experience some of the highest rates of concentrated poverty<\/a> in Fresno County.<\/p>\n With the study helping illustrate the benefits of the program, organizers now hope to take these results to policymakers to extend this program long-term \u2014 if not make it permanent.<\/p>\n \u201cGuaranteed income works,\u201d said Andy Levine, an adviser for the program who\u2019s also a Fresno Unified trustee.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is something that should not just be a 12-month program, not just for 150 families,\u201d he added, \u201cbut really, this is a model that works and needs to be expanded.\u201d<\/p>\n What other impacts did guaranteed basic income have in Fresno?<\/p>\n Families put more of their stipends toward buying groceries than any other expense, the study found.<\/p>\n Participating families received debit cards that were credited with the $500 each month. About 23.2% of all transactions recipients made with those cards were at grocery stores and supermarkets.\u00a0<\/p>\n The second-highest spending category was transactions labeled as \u201cother,\u201d followed by fast food restaurants at 9.6% and discount stores at 8.8%.<\/p>\n But \u201cthe most significant finding\u201d from the Fresno State data had to do with debt spending, Crowell said.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the very start of the program, we saw a dramatic drop in families\u2019 reliance on borrowing from any source to cover regular expenses,\u201d she added. \u201cThis is an important finding because it demonstrates how guaranteed income was helping families avoid accruing debt and even get out of debt.\u201d<\/p>\n Researchers found that this included anything from making a dent in debt from utility bills, as was the case for the Williams family, to paying off student loans.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other positive impacts the researchers found were \u201cimproved parenting experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n For the Williams family, that included having the means to support their children\u2019s creativity \u2014 and to model it themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cThem seeing mom and dad get creative \u2014 mom painting, dad reading \u2026 now she picks up a paint brush,\u201d Ariel said of her 4-year-old daughter Aniyah.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s Picasso. I\u2019ve got the walls to prove it.\u201d<\/p>\n The report found no significant impact on other categories such as participants\u2019 rates of employment \u2014 and that finding is consistent with studies of dozens of other guaranteed basic income pilots, according to the report.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody reported that they quit their job,\u201d Crowell said. \u201cIn fact, what we did hear is that people were maintaining their regular jobs, but cutting back on gig hours that they\u2019d been doing to make extra money.\u201d<\/p>\n Rural versus urban<\/p>\n Some of the report\u2019s findings were unique to the rural versus urban participants in Fresno County\u2019s pilot.<\/p>\n That stemmed partly from population differences. About 41% of Huron\u2019s residents are immigrants \u2014 more than Fresno County as a whole, where immigrants make up about 22% of the population, and southwest Fresno, where immigrants make up about 20%.<\/p>\n That meant Huron felt the impact of intensifying immigration enforcement especially under the Trump administration about halfway through the pilot program starting in January.<\/p>\n Guaranteed income, the researchers found, provided a benefit for those families who not only weathered the instability of agricultural employment but also those who stayed home from work for fear of deportation.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the Huron residents, having the guaranteed income provided some security through the fluctuations of seasonal labor,\u201d the report said, \u201cand then as immigration enforcement forced them to stay home instead of going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s next for guaranteed basic income in Fresno?<\/p>\n Even now that the pilot program has ended, Ariel Williams said that doesn\u2019t mean her family is back at square one.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t think because we had $500 a month and it\u2019s month 13 that we\u2019re struggling again,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re not.<\/p>\n \u201cIt allowed us to make sure we budget,\u201d she added, \u201cand we\u2019re not going back down to that same place we were before.\u201d<\/p>\n But program organizers also hope that this doesn\u2019t spell the end of guaranteed basic income in Fresno County.<\/p>\n The Fresno EOC raised about $1 million in philanthropic contributions to make the pilot program happen this past year, after the \u201cshocking\u201d news that Fresno County\u2019s application to receive state funding for a guaranteed basic income pilot wasn\u2019t selected<\/a>.<\/p>\n Program leaders now plan to bring the results of this pilot to more funders, as well as local and state policymakers, to make the case for an expanded version.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need the political will now,\u201d Levine said, \u201cto take this even further.\u201d<\/p>\n Disclosure: Amber Crowell is a Fresnoland board member. The California Wellness Foundation, one of the funders of the GBI pilot, is also a Fresnoland funder.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s at stake? Researchers who studied Fresno County\u2019s first-ever guaranteed basic income program say the investment is an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-97436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GBI2.jpg\")
Andy Levine served as an adviser for Fresno County\u2019s first-ever guaranteed basic income program. Julianna Morano | Fresnoland<\/p>\n