Seattle needs a Guaranteed Basic Income

Seattle is a Welcoming City meaning “all City departments prioritize and consider policies, actions, and practices that help immigrants and refugee communities succeed.” We also have an Office of Civil Rights that recognizes more protected classes than any other city. But still, Seattle is one of the top ten most inequitable cities in the nation in terms of race-based wealth disparities.

According to the Seattle Times, in 2024 households headed by Asians were the highest-earning when classified by race, with a median income of $141,300 in 2024, compared with households headed by Black people, who had the lowest median income at $63,600. That means the highest income group defined by race earns more than twice the lowest earning group.

Disabled Seattleites also face systemic inequities. According to an article by Atticus, workers with disabilities in Seattle earned 42% less than non-disabled workers in 2022. Consider these figures relative to analysis, conducted by Upgraded Points, concluding that it takes $135,265 a year for a single adult to live comfortably in Seattle. These disparities are systemic.

That these inequities are identifiable in 2026 is profoundly disappointing, but we are presented with an opportunity to take steps to address them as a city. Providing supplemental funds to households that need it will close the gaps and guard against the loss of housing, health care, or food security.  Doing so will make our entire community more stable and create paths to opportunity that many of our neighbors have been denied. Guaranteed Basic Income can do all this.

Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) is money that people below a certain income level can count on, no matter what. It is a powerful tool for addressing poverty and its effects. GBI has been the subject of many pilot studies and has consistently shown overwhelmingly positive effects.

GBI typically provides payments to people earning less than 300% the federal poverty level. This money helps people survive when their income isn’t enough to cover expenses. Most of the money people receive as GBI is spent locally on household essentials. 72% of Washingtonians support a $500 a month GBI.

No, it’s not the same. Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a regular payment received by everyone. GBI is similar in that it is a basic level of unconditional income; the difference is mainly who gets the money. UBI is paid to everyone, while GBI is only paid to people who need it. Fewer people receive GBI, so it is less expensive and more feasible to implement. UBI would be so expensive that some proponents have proposed ending other entitlement programs, like Social Security, to pay for it.

GBI helps people meet their needs by putting more money in their pockets, but Seattle can also make it easier to meet those needs by making them less expensive or more accessible, in other words: Guaranteeing Basic Services.

• Fast, reliable, and free public transportation will put money back into Seattleites’ pockets and keep the city running, especially now that gas and food are so expensive.
• City-run grocery stores will provide essentials at a more affordable price by removing the profit margin.
• Municipal WiFi will save residents hundreds of dollars a year.
• Expanding the Seattle Promise, of two years of free school at our city colleges, to everyone in Seattle will provide people with the opportunity for retraining in several trades, many of which are green, sustainable, and AI-resistant.
• Creating a Second Response team: case managers who will help us and our neighbors navigate the confusing public benefits systems when needed, will lead people to navigate systems more efficiently, effectively, and achieve better outcomes faster.
• Instituting a tax on long-time vacant units managed by large housing providers will decrease the cost of these units, add housing stock to the local market, and decrease the cost of housing.
• Continuing procurement by the Seattle Social Housing Developer with the goal of reaching 30 to 40% of all housing in Seattle becoming social housing. This will let everyone who wants to live in Seattle be able to without being displaced by rising costs.
• Approving Whole Washington will make health care universal in Washington State, saving most people money and guaranteeing access to health care will alleviate many people’s dependence on employer-sponsored insurance.

Guaranteeing Basic Income and Services will make living in Seattle easier for people with lower incomes.

There have been numerous pilots, including three in our immediate region: GRIT in Tacoma, paid people who earned between 100 and 200% of the FPL $500 a month for 12 months; GBI Pilot in Seattle-King County gave individuals at or blow 200% of the FPL $500 a month for 10 months; New Leaf Project in Vancouver BC, gave unsheltered people a one time payment of $7,500 CA, (~$5,500US). The outcomes reported from these studies are comparable to those found by the Unconditional Cash Study, which I include here for its robustness and duration. This study was a randomized controlled trial of 3,000 participants earning less than 300% the FPL. Participants were randomly assigned to either receive $1000 a month for 3 years or be in a control group. There have been many other pilots across the country.

The Utility Discount Program is a discount and refund program run by Seattle Public Utilities. People must apply and qualify to receive a 60% discount on their electric bill and a credit for half of a typical Water, Sewage, and Garbage bill. At the end of the year, if their credit on their electric bill is larger than the last bill they get sent a check.

To qualify, customers must show that their income is below the inclusion threshold (a different formula based on area median income is used, but the result is comparable to 300% FPL).

Seattle already has a payment program with comparable inclusion criteria. The Utility Discount Program is run by Seattle Public Utilities and gives people refundable credits on their utility bill, and could be quickly adapted into a GBI. I propose a simple process to accomplish this:

• Raise the SPU electricity and water/waste rates for all customers
• Discount the rates for all but the highest-consuming accounts
• Make the discount refundable for households that qualify for the UDP
• Currently, refunds are issued annually; it is preferable to disperse these payments bimonthly on the utility billing cycle.

One significant benefit of adapting the UDP into a GBI is that refunds are unlikely to interfere with other public benefits.

It is not a tax but paying these refunds through rate increases to the highest consumers of utilities means that the program would be progressively funded.

Many renters don’t have their own water or electric bills. There is a way for these tenants to qualify for the UDP, but it requires property owners or managers to enroll their building (See Section 5.1.5 Here).

Many Seattle renters are subject to Ratio Utility Billing System (RUBS). This is when property owners bundle utilities of entire buildings or even multiple buildings, and then, through opaque methods, determine the utility bill for each unit. This is presented as a charge based on their percentage of the building’s usage, but comparison with neighbors, use of third-party billers, and a profound lack of transparency lead many tenants to believe that these charges are arbitrary.

The following is a proposed resolution to both the issue of tenants lacking a to participate in the UDP without an individual utility account, and a simple way of ending the seemingly exploitative practice of RUBS:

SPU would create an account and bill each unit of housing directly.

That would allow for eligible tenants who qualify for the UDP to receive it. This would also make utility billing more transparent for all tenants and remove the burden of additional billing processes from property management. These calculations are not complicated, and the fee to SPU would likely be less than what property managers pay third-party billers.

A challenge to enacting a vacancy tax is that it’s not always clear how many rental units are available to be occupied in a building. The administrative complexity of determining this total could be cost-prohibitive. It may be so expensive to assess the market that could be taxed that the yield from that tax would not pay for the cost of enacting it.

SPU individually billing each unit presents a solution to this: property management is notified that moving forward each unit in the building will  receive individual utility bills. The bills will be calculated based on a formula considering square footage and the number of residents. A percentage of the total usage will be charged to the building for landscaping and electricity use in common areas, and be nontransferable.

It will be the property management’s responsibility to communicate to SPU the number of units in each building and the number of tenants. This could be confirmed by incentivizing tenants to report the number of units in their building. In this way, the information will be conveyed voluntarily by property managers and could be used to issue taxes to companies that maintain rental prices that are prohibitive to prospective tenants.

GBI benefits all of society, not just the people who receive it. There are three ways:

1. Keeping people housed and fed is easier and less expensive than getting them back in housing.
2. At a population level, poverty is strongly correlated with crime. In a large group of people, as the percentage of people who are below the poverty line increases, crime increases. Crimes like shoplifting, car prowls, selling stolen goods, and survival sex work are driven by a lack of resources in that they are all forms of commerce. Drug use, or self-medicating, is also a crime driven by a lack of resources. These crimes greatly lessen as people gain access to more resources, and that benefits all of society.
3. The vast majority of the money people receive through GBI programs is spent locally in their community. A portion of each dollar spent in Seattle would be paid to employees in Seattle who also spend most of their money close to home. If people spend their money at businesses that are based in Seattle, the effect is even greater, as local businesses are more likely to have local suppliers.

When exploring the true cost of a GBI it is important to acknowledge the vast majority of the money people receive will be spent locally, so there would be significant benefit to the local economy.

The cost to SPU would be extra administration. More frequent payments to more people would undoubtedly mean more staff, but these are good city jobs that would be represented by labor unions.

Property management firms would have the added responsibility of reporting how many units are in their buildings and names of the tenants, a relatively minimal task. Any administrative fees billed by SPU would likely be similar or lower than  the systems they presently use.

The financial pay out would be $6,000 a year for each eligible account. This is an opt-in program and the enrollment will likely increase over time.

The refunds will be paid through increased utility rates to the highest consumers. Those are also consumers with the most capacity to reduce their consumption. The benefits of decreased energy consumption and increased local spending will likely outweigh any cost.

• Year One: A pilot project would be conducted in a deeply affordable apartment building: a group of tenants would receive the GBI payments of $500 a month (or $1000 every two months), a comparable (control) group of tenants, randomly selected in the same building, would not receive the payments. Both groups would be surveyed about their perceived quality of life, spending habits, food, housing, and health security. Participants from both groups would be compensated $50 for each survey.
• Year Two: If the pilot results are positive, the utility rates would be adjusted for all accounts, deeply discounted for all but the highest users (as previously discussed property management firms with bundled accounts would be handled differently), the qualifying households would receive their discount as a bimonthly a refund of $500 minus their electricity bill.
  • There should also be an outreach campaign intended to enroll additional customers.
• Years 3 and beyond:
  • Expand this refund structure to shelters like tiny home villages.
  • Identify a way to have tiered refunds to larger households.