Decky Mbala came to Maine in 2021 with her daughter from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Like many asylum seekers initially barred from working when they get to the U.S., she survived on General Assistance.
The day Mbala got her first paycheck, she lost the state and local aid that covered basic expenses. Without it, she did not know how she was going to pay the $1,300 rent for her Biddeford apartment. She had hit the so-called benefits cliff, the abrupt drop in public assistance as incomes get just above limits.
“When GA left me, I didn’t know who to turn to, what to do.” Mbala, who was interviewed through a translator, said.
Then Mbala was one of 20 low-income single mothers selected for a pilot dubbed the “Project HOME Trust.” The yearlong study measured what would happen if these women — mostly asylum seekers and refugees — were given $1,000 monthly with no strings attached. The women were compared with members of a control group who did not receive the money.
The small sample size and timeframe make it hard to know if a universal basic income program would work widely in Maine. No country has one, though many have tested it. But most of the women’s lives improved, which is in line with other studies conducted around the nation, although one has been criticized by conservative groups for reducing work.
The Project HOME study actually found participants increased their average hours worked per week. At the start of the program, only one of the participants and control group members said they were “doing OK or better” financially.
By the end, roughly half of the program gave that response, while the control group stayed the same. Participants could better handle an emergency $400 expense at the end of the study, and their children reported feeling happier. All remained housed.
The Portland nonprofit behind the program, the Quality Housing Coalition, says these results prove Maine needs to fundamentally reimagine its public benefits system. The coalition will be repeating the yearlong study with 20 more mothers starting this month. It is considering larger programs in more rural areas of Maine beginning in 2025.
“It is a movement from a shame-based approach to public benefits — an unworthiness approach that we’ve had for so many years that creates a lot of stigma, is really challenging and prevents people from thriving — to a trust-based approach,” Victoria Morales, QHC’s executive director and a former Democratic state legislator, said.
Any such program is unlikely to start on a wider scale anytime soon. The Maine Legislature has taken up the issue twice and only elected to study the issue. MaineHousing, the state housing authority, has said it does not administer any such programs now and has no plans to start.
Such a program would require a substantial amount of funds. QHC had to raise nearly $500,000 in donations and grant money to fund two cycles of the 20-person, year-long programs.
“Doing something on a statewide basis could be hugely expensive depending on how big a population you’re talking about,” Garrett Martin, the CEO of the liberal Maine Center for Economic Policy, which has recommended that a state agency run a cash assistance program.
Martin said there’s a “constellation” of programs out there that channel cash to families, largely within the tax code and benefit programs. It would take federal engagement to make those resources more widely available, and many of them will still want control and oversight over how public benefit programs are administered.
Proponents of guaranteed income insist that direct cash assistance programs with fewer restrictions on spending would be more cost effective, reduce bureaucracy and have ripple benefits for the economy, by putting more money in Mainers’ pockets. But opponents argue that it would be costly and is not guaranteed to lead to lasting improvements in people’s lives.
In addition to Mbala’s regular job at Cintas, she began working on selling clothing she designed through her own online business. That was only possible because of the direct cash that allowed her to buy necessary equipment, she said. She spent the rest of the cash mostly on clothing for her daughter, furniture for her apartment and transportation, she said.
Patience Munezero, 28, was working two 40-hour jobs before joining the program. It meant she wouldn’t see her 4-year-old daughter from Friday through Monday each week, as Munezero worked around the clock in a residential home for people with disabilities.
Munezero said her absence was so upsetting to her daughter that she’d have to keep her home from daycare on Mondays.
“This helped me to change my life,” said Munezero, who immigrated to Maine from Burundi eight years ago. “[My daughter is] seeing me more of the time, after day care, during the weekend. I’ve learned to be positive, to value myself.”
