Rochester City Council votes unanimously to approve guaranteed basic income pilot program

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — The Rochester City Council Tuesday night voted unanimously to approve the guaranteed basic income pilot program that former mayor Lovely Warren proposed before leaving office.

Warren said the pilot program she proposed would provide $500 a month for 175 city families in need and ideally, another 175 families would be chosen for the program in the second year.

Mayor-Elect Malik Evans says he wants to work to make the program bigger, expanding it to as many as 1,000 families.

"My goal is to work to make this bigger," Evans said. "I want to be able to do that, but I also want to continue to work with my colleagues on council, and I heard from my colleagues on council about both these pieces of legislation and they said ‘Mr. Chairman, can you at least start getting started?’ I will say that there is a lot of work internally that the incoming mayor [himself] will have to make sure that this is implemented with fidelity and I will work to do that while also simultaneously working to ensure that we do everything we can to expand both of these pieces of legislation."

You can find more about the legislation by checking out page 18 of the proposals. Mobile users can click here.

December 14, 2021 Additiona… by News10NBC

The other piece of legislation Evans is referring to is the "buy the block" program. Both programs will be using funds from the American Rescue Plan.