Universal Basic Income in San Leandro

"Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the action of human beings." — Nelson Mandela in 2005 at the Make Poverty History rally in London’s Trafalgar Square.

Average rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in San Leandro in 2020 is approximately $1,845 per month. For a single year of occupancy, that total rent is $22,140. The minimum wage as of July 1, 2020 is $15 per hour. For a single full-time worker that equals a gross annual income of $31,200. After taxes, that comes to approximately $26,425 annual net income. That leaves you with approximately $4,285 for the entire year, or about $357 monthly, to pay for groceries, water, electricity, transportation, healthcare, and internet. This assumes you don't get sick or injured, lose your job or access to reliable transpiration, are evicted or foreclosed on, experience any kind of financial emergency, and that you aren't saving for retirement. In one of the most expensive cost-of-living metropolitan regions in the country. If you scale that upward for the "average" American family of two adults with two kids, that double-income doesn't cover the increased gap for basic necessities on top of childcare costs.

Simply put: people working minimum wage in our city cannot afford to live here. I'm talking about those "essential workers" we all allegedly care about so much — grocers, fast-food cashiers, janitors, retail clerks, and home health aides, among so many others. Notably, most of those workers are Black, Asian, and Latinx, and of those groups, many of those are women who also experience wage discrimination.

Since the San Leandro Chamber of Commerce, through their President and CEO Emily Griego, has made it clear numerous times during public comment at City Council meetings that local government has no business determining wages and that any increases to the minimum wage will cause businesses to go bankrupt, that doesn't leave us much in the way of options.

The problem is compounded when we look at the future of work and see how increasing automation and other technological advancements are putting people out of a job all on their own. As more and more jobs become outsourced to robots and automated processes, workers are displaced from salaried-employment as much as minimum wage work, often pushing people into the unstable and unsustainable gig economy. And this has only gotten worse due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

So, if local businesses refuse to pay their workers a living wage at the same time as jobs are disappearing, then a new solution is needed.

Universal basic income. UBI is the government giving people money. But it's also a lot more than that. UBI is a way to infuse supply and demand into our consumer-based economy. UBI serves as a way to ensure people who aren't paid a living wage get enough money to supplement the difference based on their local cost of living. It curbs poverty, which is actually a cost-saving measure because letting people live in poverty is more expensive than just giving them money. The money we spend on police, fire, medical, substance addiction, mental health, and homelessness, reacting to people in distress when they finally hit rock-bottom is big business compared to the relatively cheaper option of just ending poverty.

We've seen the success of the UBI program in Stockton by former Mayor Michael Tubbs. Contrary to many naysayers, the results showed increased work ethic, entrepreneurship, and civic engagement of the participants while simultaneously diminishing people's debt and problems with their overall health. In fact, the program was so successful that it is spreading now to over 40 major cities across the nation!

But we don't need to go far, because UBI is moving next door in Oakland. Now, there's a lot of misconceptions about the proposal, particularly hysteric claims of reverse-racism and anti-White discrimination. So let's set the record straight. The money for this program is coming from private donors, such as Blue Meridian Partners. To be eligible for Oakland's proposed UBI program you must have at least one child under the age 18 and an income that is at or below 50% of the area's median income. For a family of three that's about $59,000 per year. Half of the spots are already reserved for those earning less than 138% of the federal poverty level. For a family of three that's about $30,000 per year. All of the 600 possible families that can participate will be selected randomly from a pool of applicants and, yes, only Black, Indigenous and People of Color can apply.

Before you jumpstart that reflexive outrage, here's the reason why: White households in Oakland on average make about three times as much annually than Black households, according to the Oakland Equity Index. White people are, by and large, far more wealthy than BIPOC, due to the unfair advantages they received due to our nation's history of racism that has existed since 1619 with the introduction of chattel slavery and extends all the way to our current prison-industrial complex, among other areas of our society. This is a targeted UBI that reflects the increased understanding for reparations that addresses historical racism as much as it provides economic support to the groups most in need, due in no small part to that very racism that persists into the present day.

Now, this shouldn't be surprising for longtime San Leandrans. We know that San Leandro was a sundown town that engaged in redlining and other acts of systemic racism to maintain a White hegemony that siphoned millions of dollars in Federal Housing Authority subsidies. In fact, some BIPOC residents still remember when the KKK and neo-Nazi skinheads maintained HQs in the Washington Manor neighborhood and seeing cross-burnings as recently as 1989!

If you're White or White-passing and lived in San Leandro prior to the late 1970s, especially if your family owned property, you directly benefited from violent systemic racism. Your wealth is built on the blood of Black bodies, shed predominantly by the San Leandro Police Department at the Oakland border, to deliberately maintain White supremacy in our city. Sorry, because that's not a fun fact to have to reconcile yourself with, but also not sorry, because any emotions you may be feeling pale in comparison to the oppression that BIPOC endured.

So what does this have to do with UBI in San Leandro? Well... if minimum wage workers and their families, who are predominantly People of Color that have been disenfranchised by bigotry as well as Women of Color who already experience pay disparities, can't afford to live in San Leandro; and if local businesses refuse to pay a living wage, while jobs are also disappearing at the same time due to technological innovation; then the only way to undo generations of poverty is with a targeted UBI program like in Oakland. It's more than just our moral responsibility for all of the horrible things done to BIPOC in our city, it's actually the cheapest way to create a thriving community for all of us!

If we truly believe in the values we tell others that San Leandro stands for, then our investments must reflect them if we hope to reap the dividends.

Take note and take care.