Ulster County to test UBI
Ulster County offers $500 per month to 100 households to test impact of boosted incomes
Chris McKenna Times Herald-Record
Ulster County plans to distribute $500 per month in privately donated funds to 100 lower-income households for one year. It's a pilot program to test a progressive policy that has gained ground in some U.S. cities.
County Executive Pat Ryan, who conceived the universal basic income initiative as a spinoff of the county's pandemic-relief efforts, said Wednesday that 2,000 people already had applied to participate in the program since it was announced last week. Any Ulster households earning up to $46,900 a year are eligible.
Ryan said he was both excited and distressed about the flood of immediate interest.
"It just weighs on me that there are so many people in such need right now," he said.
Ulster may be one of the first counties in the U.S. to join a policy experiment that various cities have taken up since Stockton, California, led the way in 2019, offering $500 a month to 125 city households for 18 months.
One tiny Hudson Valley city enlisted in that wave last year. The City of Hudson, a riverside community of 6,200 in Columbia County, began a five-year pilot that is providing $500 a month to 20 randomly selected applicants earning less than the median income of $35,153 a year.