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10 03 24 Denver Basic Income Project's Mark Donovan discusses Denver ending funding
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The program is donor-supported, including from the City of Denver, which has now nixed the line item from the latest budget proposal on what is now to talk about that in greater detail in the KOA Common Spirit Health Hotline, Executive Director and Founder of the Denver Basic Income Project. It's Mark Donovan. Mark, welcome back to Colorado's Morning News. What was your reaction when you saw that your project was not included in the budget? Good morning. Thanks for having us back on the show. We were disappointed not to be included in the first draft of the budget, and we wish we had the opportunity to present our research findings to the Mayor's Office and allow Mayor Johnson here directly from participants so they can fully grasp the nuances of the study before making funding decisions. It's a complex space that we work in, and this is just the 10-month report of what City Council believes should be a longitudinal study of at least three years, so we've worked closely with the City to support housing 1,000, and now all in mile high, and we think together we will have better impacts than working separately. So we're going to continue to present our findings and to work to get the funding that will allow us to continue moving forward. Mark, have you received the why of why funding was cut, and because if I remember correctly, Mayor Johnson is a pretty strong advocate for this project. Is there a rationale of why they're now looking forward to cutting it? I think the City has significant budget pressure at the moment, so I think what we'd like to see happen is we sit down and talk about the results and the efficiency of what we're doing and how it can complement the work of the City, so it's something that we believe strongly complements the work that the City's doing. We've seen that it can save the City money on public service interventions, that people are living in stable housing, the number of people living in stable housing is doubled in our study, we're seeing that the larger payment group has also avoided increases in full-time work, and so we think these findings are incredibly exciting, and that while there still are certainly more questions that have been surfaced from these learnings, it to us indicates that we should keep doing this and answer those questions, and Denver's recognized right now as the national leader in demonstrating the power of providing a guaranteed income to people experiencing homelessness, nobody else is doing this, so the data that we're producing and the impact we're having on life is tremendous, and so we think it's essential that we move forward, the City only represents 30% of the funding that we've had to date, so we've been doing this as a public-private partnership, and we think it's vital to move forward. Since the City, you say is 30% of that, where are you going to fill that, where's the stop gap going to be for that funding for you all, and you referenced something I wasn't aware of that this is the first draft of the budget, or at least I know it's going through review, so maybe you could come back on, but how do you make up that shortfall if this doesn't happen? Well, again, both foundations like the Colorado Trust and others have stepped up and provided funding for this, and there's lots of private dollars and individuals, all of our tech moguls are saying right now that universal basic income is an essential part of the economy of the future, that it's inevitable, and there's a lot of money out there, and there's a lot of money being sent to fight poverty, economic injustice, and homelessness, and so our argument is this is one of the most direct ways to do it. We have only two full-time paid staff on our team, but we've deployed $10.5 million to over 800 on-house individuals in Denver, and the impacts have been tremendous, so we'd love to talk about the cost of efficiency of this work and how when we do it together as a city with our amazing community-based organization partners and the Housing Stability Office, when we all work together, we can actually move the needle on poverty and homelessness. We think the mayor's been really bold, declaring a state of emergency on homelessness and working hard to get people to safety, but we need long-term solutions, and we think that a guaranteed income is a piece of this that's essential to actually doing much better and alleviating the suffering that's happening all over the country. Mark, and wrapping up with you, have you had an opportunity to share these thoughts and concerns with the mayor as of late, and not putting you on the spot directly, but generally we have the mayor on every Friday, in hopes of having them on tomorrow, is there something that you would like us to pass along or ask the mayor come tomorrow? Yes, I would like you to ask him to schedule a meeting with our participants and our team to do a deep dive into our findings and the economics of it and the strategy of it, and let's sit down and discuss it and find a way to move this forward in the most expedient and efficient way. Executive Director and Founder of the Denver Basic Income Project Mark Donovan, thank you. Thank you. It's beginning to sound a lot like the holidays. The Roku Channel, your home for free and premium TV, is giving you access to holiday music and genre-based stations from iHeart all for free. 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