San Francisco launches guaranteed income program for transgender residents
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Mental Health Services
This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.
San Francisco launches guaranteed income program for transgender residents
(CNN) — San Francisco began offering residents who receive mental health services a guaranteed income payment, a step forward in its ongoing effort to transform the mental health system for people of color.
The income will help some of the city’s most vulnerable patients pay for therapy and other services — a critical tool in the fight against suicide and self-harm that often drives people to seek treatment in the first place.
The program is part of the city’s ongoing commitment to reducing racial discrimination in mental health care, which has led to the implementation of several programs over the past several years.
The income is a type of basic income that makes up to four of the city’s roughly 400 mental health programs, said Jane McWhorter, the city’s chief of social innovation and workforce development.
“It was really important to them to give people a sense of independence,” said McWhorter. “And it was really important that it was a guaranteed income. We don’t want people to be dependent on the city.”
City officials expect that the income will benefit an additional 700 patients, based on the number of providers who would be eligible for the payment, which is set at $3,000, with the option to double that amount, if needed.
“We really think our population on the whole and the populations closest to us are the most vulnerable in the system,” said David Cohen, the city’s chief human services officer, calling the program a “model” that would potentially serve an increased number of people compared to a typical income.
The program is similar to a system in the state of Maryland, which began distributing a “direct cash payment” in 2016, although it serves a different population and does not include transgender patients, according to a spokesperson for the state Human Services Department.
But San Francisco’s program, like the