West Hollywood, the Los Angeles County city where celebrities strut around and paparazzi stake out the Sunset Strip, has a reputation for being quite affluent.
© Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images
An exterior view of a surprise comedy pop-up Aug. 14, 2021, in West Hollywood, Calif.
Its median per capita income is twice the national average, according the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census Bureau estimates that the average home price is more than three times the national average. A popular socialist Twitch streamer ignited a whole internet controversy by simply buying a house there.
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Yet, the city plans to experiment with universal basic income, a policy intervention popularized by Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang that seeks to combat extreme poverty by delivering regular, direct payments to individuals.
Why?
“While our community may be seen one way, we do have a portion of the population that’s living below the poverty line,” Mayor Lindsey Horvath said. “We want to focus work on uplifting vulnerable community members.”
The Census Bureau estimates that 11.7% of West Hollywood’s residents are living in poverty, and Horvath is a member of the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income coalition, a network of mayors around the country running guaranteed income test pilots. Other members include San Francisco Mayor London Breed, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
The specifics of West Hollywood’s plans are still being finalized, but for now, the city plans to give monthly unconditional $1,000 payments to at least 25 LGBT senior citizens. The pilot is slated to last 18 months, and Horvath expects it to begin by the end of this year.
“We chose that group because of the demographics in West Hollywood, where 45% of residents identify as LGBT, and 25% identify as older adults or senior citizens,” she said. “We know that historically, the older LGBT population has been discriminated against, and they’ve had to deal with the effects of discrimination compounded over years, from the AIDS crisis to being denied the right to marry and missing out on benefits. We decided that this population was the right one to focus on.”
Horvath provided figures showing that 44% of those living in poverty are older than the age of 55 (the Census Bureau estimates that just 14.8% of the city’s population is 65 and older), and that nationally, LGBT people have a 21.6% poverty rate compared with 15.7% for straight cisgender individuals.
She said that the biggest criticism the pilot has faced comes from people asking why the benefits are not being extended to other subsets of the population. The answer to that question is relatively straightforward: West Hollywood is not in complete control of the pilot.
“When people ask why not expand the program to LGBT people overall, or to older adults overall, it’s because we’re looking to focus on this specific population for research purposes,” she said. “We’re partnering with Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research to develop pilots throughout country that focus on different populations in different communities and after looking at demographics, it seemed to make sense focus on the LGBT population because it hasn’t been studied or discussed in other cities.”
The pilot is so much of a joint endeavor that West Hollywood is still seeking a funding partner for the project. Horvath said negotiations are still ongoing and could not provide specifics about who may help fund the pilot.
Other pilots are underway across the country, but none specifically focus on the LGBT population. To gauge success, researchers will conduct frequent check-ins with participants and collect information on housing stability, health outcomes and more. Critics of universal basic income believe it would discourage work, but trials have yet to show this is the case.
Horvath said she’s confident the pilot will be successful.
“I think we’ve already seen from data in other places that have run trials that guaranteed income brings benefits to communities,” she said. “We’re open to seeing what data comes out of the program, but we’re confident moving forward.”
