On February 22, 2023, the County of Sonoma issued the following press release:
A pilot program that will provide a guaranteed income to 305 families in Sonoma County will begin issuing $500 monthly payments today to applicants selected for the 24-month trial.
The Pathway to Income Equity pilot will study the impact of unconditional, guaranteed income on reducing poverty and promoting economic mobility for families with young children. The program was developed by First 5 Sonoma County and funded by the County of Sonoma in partnership with three cities – Santa Rosa, Petaluma and Healdsburg. First 5 is partnering with the Fund for Guaranteed Income and a coalition of local community organizations to implement the program.
“These payments will help families with young children who are often struggling under the double burden of the high costs of housing and child care – typically the two highest household expenses,” said Supervisor Chris Coursey, chair of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. “The information we gain from this pilot program will help shape future efforts to improve the health and welfare of our community.”
The pilot program aims to alleviate financial stress felt by families with young children under the age of 6 in Sonoma County. A 2021 United Ways of California study, Struggling to Move Up: The Real Cost Measure in California, revealed that 52 percent of Sonoma County households with children under 6 struggled to cover basic needs. Single mothers are most likely to struggle: 67 percent in the county were below the study’s self-sufficiency standard.
Black, Latino, Asian and Native American households comprise 70 percent of the households struggling to meet their basic needs, even though they make up just 33 percent of the total population in Sonoma County.
Research shows conclusively that family economic stability supports readiness for kindergarten, better academic achievement, increased likelihood of completing high school and post-secondary education, better long-term health outcomes, and a well-prepared future workforce.
During the two-month application period last fall, Pathway to Income Equity received 6,450 online applications for 305 spots. To be eligible, a family must live in Sonoma County; have a household income of no more than 185 percent of the federal poverty level dependent on family size (for example,
$51,338 or below for a family of four); be pregnant and/or parenting a child under the age of 6; and have experienced adverse economic impacts due to the COVID-19 pandemic (loss of employment, income, child care or housing).
After initial screening, 2,383 applicants met eligibility requirements. This group accounts for only 10 percent of the families in Sonoma County with children under age 6 living on household incomes of 185 percent or less of the federal poverty limit, or $42,606 annually for a family of three.
“The number of applications we received speaks to the issue that so many in our community are struggling,” said Angie Dillon-Shore, executive director of First 5 Sonoma County, an independent public agency focused on early childhood development. “The idea that giving people cash is a disincentive to work is a myth. Most of our selected recipients are already working, many working more than one job or more than 40 hours a week just to survive.
This extra income will allow them to spend more time with their families, find a better job, or improve their financial wellbeing, resulting in better outcomes for their kids.”
Recipients were randomly selected from geographic pools including the cities of Santa Rosa, Petaluma and Healdsburg because the city councils within these communities contributed funding for the pilot. The pilot program allocated 75 percent of the spots to families living in census tracts with below-average income, health and education levels, as identified in the Portrait of Sonoma 2021 Update. The remaining 25 percent of recipients were randomly selected from a countywide pool.
“The use of Portrait data in this pilot program illuminates the power of grounding ourselves in knowing, understanding, and transforming the injustice of deep racialized inequities in our community. Being intentional in the direction of resources to specific communities of loving focus can work to unseat structural racism,” said Alegría De La Cruz, director of the Sonoma County Office of Equity.
Pathway to Income Equity is one of more than 100 guaranteed income programs underway in the United States, including at least 22 in California (Economic Security Project, 2023). To reach the widest number of potential applicants, First 5 and its partners created culturally responsive and linguistically accessible outreach. The application took an average of 90 seconds to complete, faster than any other guaranteed income pilot in the country. Once the 305 recipients were randomly selected, each applicant had to provide further documentation to prove eligibility.
The $5.4 million effort is funded by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, the city councils of Santa Rosa, Petaluma and Healdsburg, as well as Corazón Healdsburg and First 5 Sonoma County. More than 90 percent of the pilot project funding is from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, intended to help those most impacted recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
First 5 Sonoma County is working with a research evaluation firm that will be conducting focus groups, individual surveys and interviews to gather data on the impact of this unrestricted, monthly income. For more information on the applicant pool and an FAQ, visit www.SonomaPIE.org.
Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI) is a 501(c)(3) public charity launched in August 2020 to prove a viable path to guaranteed income–direct, recurring cash transfers that support those who have been locked out of welfare programs and economic systems.
Nika Soon-Shiong is the Founder and Executive Director of the Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI), a public charity that builds community-designed technologies to implement cash transfer programs in 12 American cities – including the first guaranteed income program for currently incarcerated people. She directed F4GI’s flagship pilot, the Compton Pledge and its expansion across city lines to the Long Beach Pledge.
L.A. Times’ Billionaire Owner (and His Family) Ignite a Tug-of-War Over Paper’s Future - As top editor Kevin Merida calls it quits, fault lines between billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, his daughter and the outlet’s leadership are being drawn over how to run the business.
According to his resignation announcement, Kevin Merida’s abrupt Jan. 9 exit as executive editor of the Los Angeles Times came about through a “mutual agreement” with the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a biotech magnate turned publishing dilettante. This may well be true. From everything that can be gleaned about Merida’s less-than-three-year bumpy tenure as Soon-Shiong’s No. 1 at the 143-year-old publishing institution, there was plenty of mutual dissatisfaction, mutual distrust and maybe even mutual disdain.
What went wrong? And why so quickly? Some sources point to friction with Soon-Shiong’s 30-year-old daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, who in recent years has apparently appointed herself the paper’s unofficial ombudsman, publicly upbraiding journalists when their politics don’t fall in line with her own progressive thinking.
On June 27, 2022, the First 5 Sonoma County Commission’s Meeting Agenda outlined the contract with F4GI:
Recommendation to Approve Revenue Contracts for Guaranteed Basic Income Pilot, Approve Subcontracts and Increase Allocation to Goal Area IV. Community Resiliency & Engagement
Action Item
Contractor: Sonoma County Human Services Department Project: Sonoma County Guaranteed Basic Income Pilot Amount: Source: $1,799,975 (REVENUE – 1st installment of $3,045,250 award) American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Local Coronavirus Recovery Term: 7/1/22-12/31/23* *cost extension to 12/31/24 contingent on performance
Contractor: City of Santa Rosa Project: Sonoma County Guaranteed Basic Income Pilot Amount: Source: $1,008,000 (REVENUE) American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Local Coronavirus Recovery (Santa Rosa) Term: 7/1/22-12/31/25
Contractor: Fund for Guaranteed Income Project: GBI Application & Payments Platform Amount: Source: $203,000 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Local Coronavirus Recovery (County) Term: 7/1/22-12/31/24
Contractor: Social Policy Research Associates Project: GBI Pilot Evaluation Amount: Source: $420,000 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Local Coronavirus Recovery (County) Term: 7/1/22-12/31/24
The County of Sonoma Recovery Plan & Performance Report State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds June 30, 2024 Report detailed the following:
F5 will contact applicants who will choose a partner agency as their GBI “home” for assistance with verification (proof of address, eligibility, COVID-19 impact and ages of children) and onboarding to the Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI) platform (opening a F4GI account, choosing a payment method). F5 will oversee the assessments that are completed with each participant to assess their current public benefits, ascertain their goals, needs, and opportunities to connect them with voluntary support services at any of the partner agencies, or other needed resources in the community. Eligible applicants will be randomly selected from several geographic pools to select a total of 305 households for GBI.
F5 will work with the County to ensure sufficient funds are advanced to deposit with Subcontractor, Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI), for the first year of GBI payments. F4GI is a nonprofit organization providing an accessible payment platform for recurring cash transfers to individuals and is focused on uplifting marginalized people that may lack access to and/or trust in traditional economic systems. F4GI will issue text invitations via SMS and email for seamless enrollment and onboarding; participants can choose and manage their own payment options, including bank transfers, Venmo, and prepaid debit cards via a userfriendly portal in English and Spanish. F4GI also provides tools for reporting and analytics that will be leveraged for administration and data collection.
Ms. Soon-Shiong is a former Commissioner for the City of West Hollywood’s Public Safety Commission.
Every elected official and public employee who makes or influences governmental decisions is required to submit a Statement of Economic Interest, also known as the Form 700. Per the FPPC’s guidelines, one must disclose income (including loans, gifts and travel payments) received during the 12 months prior to the date you assumed office.
Ms. Soon-Shiong reported to the FPPC that she held zero reportable financial interests upon assuming office on September 12, 2021.
As referenced from the City’s database, she appeared to only complete an assuming office statement, but failed to complete an annual or leaving office statement.
The City’s Granicus portal indicates she served on the Commission from Sep 13, 2021 to Dec 05, 2022.
She failed to publicly disclose the following positions:
Executive Director, Fund for Guaranteed Income, July 2020 to present
Social Protection, The World Bank, July 2019 to August 2021
Ms. Soon-Shiong is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Oxford.
Prior to joining the department, Nika worked in the Office of the President at the World Bank Group to support corporate and regional strategies around disruptive technologies’ impact on development pathways. She remains a consultant at the Bank, where she leads an innovation challenge which aims to build a digital platform to deliver universal basic pensions in Benin.
Inside Philanthropy listed Nika Soon-Shiong as one of the most powerful heirs in philanthropy, who are slated to assume their parent’s philanthropic ventures in the future. The article states that it is unclear what direction Soon-Shiong will take her family’s philanthropy, but she has led multiple organizations that advocate for universal basic income. 5 Soon-Shiong performed research on and advocated for universal basic income as a doctoral student at Oxford University and for the World Bank Group as a consultant. 6
Soon-Shiong is the daughter of billionaire scientist Patrick Soon-Shiong, who has an estimated net worth of $8 billion as of October 2021. Patrick Soon-Shiong began his professional career as a surgeon and made his fortune through pharmaceuticals including a cancer treatment that critics claim costs 100 times more than a comparable generic version. He has faced controversies in his business dealings, having been sued by numerous persons. 7
Patrick Soon-Shiong founded multiple companies that he has taken public, owns a medical research company with more than 1,000 employees that is researching a cure for cancer, and is developing a vaccine for Covid-19 which he administered to himself prior to being approved by government agencies. He also purchased the Los Angeles Times in 2018 for $500 million, a figure that many criticized as highly overvalued, based on his belief that he could grow it into a multimedia company that is worth even more.
Mr. Soon-Shiong currently owns dozens of patents across multiple industries.
As Executive Director of the Fund for Guaranteed Income, Ms. Soon-Shiong launched a guaranteed income program in the city of Compton, the Compton Pledge. Eight hundred residents were to receive between $300 and $600 a month to supplement their income.
Compton Pledge published the following fact sheet:
For Compton’s 95,000 residents, 30% of whom are Black and 68% of whom are Latino, structural inequalities in welfare provision have left more than 1 in 5 living below the poverty line.
The pandemic has left a further 1 in 5 Comptonians unemployed, and many are newly underemployed or face chronically low wages. Housing assistance is at capacity with waiting lists closed.
As protests for racial justice continued throughout the summer of 2020, the Movement for Black Lives published a national call to investigate and invest in guaranteed income policies and pilots, while also pushing for federal legislation outlined in the BREATHE Act, which incorporates an unconditional cash transfer. Among a slew of bold relief policies Mayor Brown has implemented over two terms in office, the Compton Pledge should be seen as Compton’s local response to these calls for action.
Mayor Brown has committed to guaranteed income as an urgent tool for Compton residents’ human dignity and economic justice. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she secured an emergency cash relief program in partnership with GiveDirectly in June 2020…
While the Compton Pledge is the first dedicated cash transfer initiative in Compton, participants in GiveDirectly’s emergency COVID-19 cash transfer program, Project 100+, included some Compton residents; their narratives give an early look at the effects we expect to see for residents across Compton. As they emerge, Compton Pledge will actively seek impact stories from trusted community-based organizations and pilot participants, while protecting participants who wish to remain anonymous.
The was not the first occasion in which GiveDirectly partnered with a nonprofit for the disbursement of UBI funds.
The Uplift Harris Guaranteed Income Pilot is an initiative of Harris County Public Health. The pilot will be administered by GiveDirectly, a nonprofit charitable organization contracted by Harris County Public Health. GiveDirectly is working with a tech partner, AidKit, to implement this program. You can expect to receive messages from GiveDirectly about your application and application status. If you opt in to research, you may be contacted by Elite Research.
Due to a lawsuit filed against Harris County by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Uplift Harris, Harris County has been ordered by the Supreme Court of Texas to pause payments.
Unfortunately, the first payment will not be delivered as originally planned. We regret sharing this news and will update you as soon as we have more information.
Harris County will continue to defend the Uplift Harris program in court and work to bring much-needed resources to Harris County residents.
Former Sonoma County Health Director Barbie Robinson, recently fired Executive Director of Harris County Public Health, is currently named as a defendant alongside fellow Harris County Commissioners and staff.
Throughout Ms. Robinson’s employment with Harris County, Sonoma County’s initiatives seemed to run in parallel with those implemented within the State of Texas.
On October 10, 2023, Commissioners Court voted to approve Public Health’s decision to grant the day-to-day administration of Uplift Harris, to a third-party, GiveDirectly, under the supervision of Public Health. GiveDirectly was chosen based on its proven experience administering projects of similar scope. As a part of the contract between Harris County and GiveDirectly the parties agreed the “providing the Services through participation in the Project serves a public purpose.”
In its role as administrator, GiveDirectly is in charge of community outreach, enrollment and administration, data tracking, monitoring, and reporting, as well as case management.
The contract with GiveDirectly states that GiveDirectly will never have more than $5,000,000 in its possession at a time. The contract also states that “[a]t the County’s election, but at least monthly, County will upon receipt of sufficient documentation (as determined by the County) . . . transfer the funds necessary to replenish the [account] in [GiveDirectly’s] possession up to $5,000,000.00 until such time the County has transferred the full $17,350,000.00 . . . for disbursement.” Harris County retains the ability to cancel the contract with GiveDirectly for reasons of convenience or for cause.
On January 12, 2024, the application period began for Uplift Harris. Applicants to Uplift Harris must fill out general information for the online application on the county website. In order to be selected, applicant must submit additional paperwork to GiveDirectly, in order to verify that the applicant is qualified. Once GiveDirectly determines that an applicant is qualified, the list of qualified applicants is given over to Elite Research to randomly select participants. Selected applicants are then required to sign an agreement with the County to receive funds. Part of this agreement asks whether the participant is willing to share information with GiveDirectly, the data gleaned from participant spending habits will go to Harris County in order to craft future programs.
GiveDirectly was an odd choice for fund administration being that their staff previously de-frauded the cash transfer program within the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Per their website:
We’ve learned members of our team in D.R.C. conspired with others outside of the organization to defraud our cash transfer program. Upon discovering this fraud in January 2023, we immediately paused operations to prevent further losses.
While our investigation is ongoing, we currently calculate around $900,000 was stolen from one of our D.R.C. programs over 6 months, diverting aid from over 1,700 families in extreme poverty. Including other cases of loss, this means ~1.1% of the money we delivered last year was lost to fraud, our highest amount to date.
This fraud was only possible because of a specific change we made in our payment process in order to work in this remote, insecure region of D.R.C. We’ve taken immediate steps to prevent this type of fraud from happening again and are taking disciplinary and legal action against those involved.
We feel deep regret for not catching this sooner and take seriously the vulnerabilities it exposed. We’re working to ensure that the families who were deprived of support receive the funds they expected.
We currently have no reason to suspect that this fraud extends beyond our Eastern D.R.C. programs and are reviewing our procedures across the organization. We continue to believe cash transfers are a highly effective, transparent, and safe form of aid. We will use this loss to further improve our controls.
Verto, a London-based B2B cross-border foreign exchange (FX) and payments enabler for startups and small businesses, said it has acquired a quarter of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) customers from Africa and the MENA region.
According to the startup’s own data, SVB had nearly 250 clients operating in both regions before its collapse — the American bank provided startups with venture debt, credit cards, and term loans. Thus, it is onboarding over 60 companies and venture firms (some with headquarters in the U.S. and Europe), including Jumia, Chipper Cash and TapTap Send.
After the bank’s collapse, African startups have been forced to review their banking options to cushion them from future eventualities. Founders and investors who spoke to TechCrunch last month said they would hold funds in multiple bank accounts across big financial institutions, which are generally perceived to be safer. They said they would also leverage smaller fintechs such as Brex and Mercury that have more extensive FDIC protection (both platforms recently increased their provision to protect deposited funds up to $2.25 million and $3 million, respectively). Though local and homegrown options for African startups and investors were few and far between, it’s unlikely to remain the case in coming months as fintechs such as Verto are getting in on the action, attempting to position themselves as alternatives.
Before the SVB Collapse, the Bank’s President, John China was a key investor and served on the Board for Houston-based Hello Alice. Circular Board dba Hello Alice was founded by Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore’s wife, Elizabeth Gore.
Hello Alice’s website claims that they are a free online platform that helps businesses launch and grow. We guide owners through every step of their entrepreneurial journey by providing knowledge, funding, networks, and peer-to-peer connections with more than 1,000,000 small business owners.
They are partnered with the NAACP, Wells Fargo, Google, TikTok, Dell, UBS and other major names and have supposedly distributed $37M in grant monies.
In March 2022, Sonoma County Supervisor Gore signed the deed to his home in San Leon, Galveston County, TX. He appeared to purchase the home for $500k in cash but denied this publicly for many months.
He finally admitted to the purchase after violating the Brown Act while traveling out of state for a Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Meeting.
In addition to serving on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, Supervisor James Gore serves on the First Five Commission which has been tasked with administering the UBI funds.
Mr. Gore has been under investigation with the Fair Political Practices Commission since May 2022 due to his financial omissions and conflicts of interest.
Being that the Gore’s are the epitome of white supremacy, they do not genuinely wish to help any people of color. Where are the UBI funds going…?
“It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.” — February 19, 1965 (2 days before he was murdered by Nation of Islam followers) — Malcolm X
