Simon Duffy was asked by the Mayor’s Greater Manchester Charity and UBI Lab Manchester to talk at a recent roundtable event on the relevance of Universal Basic Income (UBI) to the problem of homelessness. These are the slides from that talk. In summary Duffy argued that UBI is relevant to reducing homelessness in two slightly different ways: 1. UBI would help prevent homelessness - UBI addresses the inequalities in income and housing that create the risk of homelessness. 2. UBI would help people escape homelessness - UBI gives people a vital tool which significantly helps people change their situation in times of crisis. Find more free resources on basic income at: www.citizen-network.org

1. Dr Simon Duffy
UBI and Homelessness
Exploring the possibility of a quasi-UBI pilot in Manchester

2. Questions
1. What is UBI?
2. Is UBI economically feasible?
3. Is UBI politically possible?
4. Can UBI reduce homelessness?
5. What we can do now?

3. UBI is our generation’s NHS
1. What is UBI?

4. What Universal Basic Income (UBI) means
Simon’s (reasonably) standard definition
1. The community ensures everybody gets enough money to live on
2. By giving every single individual enough money to live on (sufficiency)
3. Universal means you get it even if you’re in a family (no dependency)
4. Universal means you get it whatever your lifestyle (no conditionality)
5. Universal means you get it whatever your income (no means-testing)
6. We pay for it by paying taxes on our income (et al.)
7. And we give people with higher needs extra income (UBI+)

5. UBI doesn’t make people lazy
Economic security is good for us
• UBI improves the incentive to work (by reducing taxes to normal levels)
• UBI improves mental health and educational attainment
• People continue to seek paid work (or go and learn things instead)
• People with secure incomes (e.g. rich and pensioners) don’t stop working
• UBI takes away risk of losing benefits from trying to work or volunteering
• UBI doesn’t stop us educating, training and supporting each other
• UBI does remove sanctions, create economic security and reduce poverty

7. The conditions for wellbeing
• We flourish when we can each
express our individual gifts in
community with others.
• Wellbeing requires resources,
opportunities and relationships.
• The conditions for our collective
wellbeing flows from our collective
commitment to justice.
Keys to Citizenship

8. UBI is redistribution done right
2. Is UBI economically feasible?

14. Why UBI is affordable
The redistributional logic of UBI
• If we pay for UBI though income tax then UBI redistributes resources from people
above the mean income to people below the mean income. In the UK that means taking
money away from the richest 20% and redistributing it to the poorest 80%.
• In fact it is equivalent to all of us receiving a fair share of the nation’s GDP, by all paying
into the pot a fair share of our income in taxes. Currently the mean per capita income is
(at least) £29,600, and 25% of that is £7,400 (although the full picture is more complex
if we adjust for age and ability).
• This is NOT government spending and it doesn’t stop us paying for public services.
• Equality is generally good for the health of the economy.
• It is affordable if we choose it - and there are good reasons to choose it.

15. Poverty is a political choice
3. Is UBI politically feasible?

16. Welfare is political, not economic
Perhaps the conditions for change are emerging
• Welfare state born in Germany under Bismark as an effort to protect the state
from growing demands for an economic revolution, but this model did not provide
the protections necessary to defend people’s economic security in 1930s.
• More ambitious welfare states emerge post-WWII around the world, but still based
on patriarchal and industrial assumptions.
• In 1970 Nixon nearly introduces radical UBI reforms, but this marks the high-water
mark for universality and economic security. Ideology shifts across the Western
world as the threat of community revolution recedes. Privatisation of resources,
government and media locks in neoliberal agenda.

17. Changing times
Some signs of hope
• The (neo)liberal counter-revolution may be running out of intellectual steam and
political support. Greed is no longer looking so good.
• Economic growth is undermined by inequality and instead indebtedness and
precarity have grown. 50 years of evidence that inequality doesn’t help.
• Governments are flirting with the economic justice (Scotland, Wales, S Korea,
Spain and Mayors across the USA). There is growing support for UBI within the
UK political system.
• Citizens are starting to get organised to campaign for it. UBI polls really well.

20. Cash helps
4. Can UBI reduce homelessness?

21. Some pilots and research
• City of London: 2010
• University of Notre Dame Study: 2016
• New Leaf, Vancouver: 2018
• Miracle Messages, San Fransisco: 2020
• University of Illinois: 2022
• Santa Clara County, California: 2023
• City of Denver: 2023
UBI for the homeless

22. City of London Personal Budget Project started in 2009

23. University Notre Dame Study analysing impact of cash help for homelessness

24. New Leaf Project in Vancouver which ran from 2018

25. Miracle Money in San Fransisco running from 2020

26. Santa Clara government programme for homeless teenagers starting in 2023

27. University of Illinois project starting in 2023

28. Major city-wide programme to test use of cash for homeless people in Denver starting in 2023

29. Cash is not The Answer, but it helps
• Cash does more than pay for
housing costs
• It also helps create trust, slack,
relationships, cognitive capacity
and pride
• But beware the neoliberal framing
(e.g. The Economist). UBI is not
an excuse to abandon or blame
people.
Some lessons

30. Power is citizen action
5. What can we do now?

31. Some things to consider
• We may not be able to amend the DWP from Manchester, but maybe we can use
budgets, grants or other cash transfers outside their influence.
• We may not be able to get money from Whitehall, but maybe we can we raise the
money from Mancunians, from foundations or from existing budgets.
• We maybe not able to fund a major RCT, but maybe we can work in partnership with
universities or the existing UBI research community.
• We maybe not able to do any new work, but maybe we can encourage new thinking
by using existing data or tracking current practices.
• We may see little hope from the current political establishment, but maybe we need
to think about creating hope through new alliances.

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2022
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2022
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