‘No Strings Attached’: Black Women in Georgia to Get $850 Per Month

Business

By ShaCamree Gowdy Published: December 13, 2021

‘No Strings Attached’: Black Women in Georgia to Get $850 Per Month

FILE - In this early Monday, Jan. 16, 2017 file photo, a man walks past the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The historic congregation at the heart of Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had preached, sits at the intersection of national politics and the fate of a handful of pressing national policy fights. Over fifty years ago, Dr. King called for a guaranteed income to alleviate racial and economic injustice, a hope now made possible for Black women statewide, thanks to the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund. (AP Photo/Branden Camp)

In Summary

Poor, Black women in Georgia are slated to get $850 per month in cash for a period of two years, a move expected to boost financial and mental health security.

A program called In Her Hands will soon begin distributing $850 per month to 650 poor, Black women in Georgia—no strings attached—to promote financial stability and mental health while also addressing the racial wealth gap, per HuffPost.

The project will kick off in Atlanta’s historic Old Fourth Ward in early 2022 and is said to be the largest guaranteed income project in the South to date, spanning urban, suburban and rural communities.

Its launch in Atlanta, specifically the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, is deliberate, as Martin Luther King Jr. grew up there and once advocated for a guaranteed income or regular cash support that is not universal but targeted at a specific demographic or economic level.

“A second evil which plagues the modern world is that of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, it projects its nagging, prehensile tentacles in lands and villages all over the world,” said Martin Luther King Jr. in his Nobel Lecture in 1964. “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.”

The program is being led by the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund, a combination of local elected officials and charities, and the nonprofit GiveDirectly. It will look at how unconditional cash transfers improve participants’ financial and mental well-being.

“Black women are among the most likely groups to experience cash shortfalls that make covering basic needs difficult. This isn’t the result of poor choices; it’s the result of pervasive economic insecurity that has the sharpest impacts on women and communities of color,” said Hope Wollensack, executive director of the GRO Fund, according to HuffPost. “Guaranteed income is a step toward creating a more just and equitable economy.”

Black women in Georgia, including transgender and cisgender women, endure more economic instability than almost any other demographic, according to GiveDirectly, earning 63 cents for every dollar earned by white men. In Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, 38% of Black women live in poverty, compared to 26% of Black men and 8% of white women.