$750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people (Doug Smith, Dec. 19, 2023, LA Times)
The results were so promising that the researchers decided to publish results after only six months. The answer: food, 36.6%; housing, 19.5%; transportation, 12.7%; clothing, 11.5%; and healthcare, 6.2%, leaving only 13.6% uncategorized.Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered.
“I felt there was enough interest and the initial findings were compelling enough that it was important to get those results out,” said Benjamin Henwood, director of the Center for Homelessness, Housing and Health Equity Research at the Dworak-Peck School, who led the study.