We gave Holly $250 a month for 3 months. We shipped her a GiveCard (our own debit cards that work just about everywhere except Liquor Stores and Casinos) equipped with her own PIN code and a note that told her the dates of her 3 installments. $250 on June 24th. $250 on July 24th.$250 on August 24th. She also had my phone number in case she had any issues with her card. This is one of the standard GiveCard interventions.
This was everything we gave. $750 in total, no case management, no financial support resources, no shelter connections, no job pipeline partnerships nor anything else proven to be effective in helping tackle urban poverty – all we gave was spendable money, and not that much of it. To understand how such a relatively small financial intervention made such a big difference, we should first take a minute in understanding Holly.
who is Holly?
Holly is a woman currently located in East Boston, in her mid 50s when she applied to GiveCard. She suffers from chronic illness that prevents her from work and has to (somehow) live off of the standard allotment of government benefits. Her social safety net consists of some friends, all of whom themselves also struggle with financial insecurity (something extremely common with low income individuals – social safety nets can only be as strong as the society they’re anchored to).
As a result of a myriad of factors, Holly found herself facing homelessness. She was in a category GiveCard refers to as the ‘fringe’ of homelessness – people one small incident away from being homeless. She was staying on a friend’s couch, who couldn’t support her for long due to their own financial needs. Her government benefits were being entirely spent on upkeep, and whatever little was left over she would contribute to groceries for her hosts, ensuring her place on their couch. This left nothing for future rent or any chance of self-sustenance. She was in an indefinite limbo. She'd been on a waitlist for subsidized housing for a number of months.
how Holly spent her money
Suddenly, GiveCard enters the scene and things have changed for Holly. All of the following data is a mix of verbal reports from Holly and transaction data GiveCard uses to follow cardholder’s journeys.
First, Holly carefully balanced her first month of GiveCard budget to buy groceries for herself and the household she was staying with.This eased pressure off of everyone involved and bought her more time in that house to get herself organized. She used the remainder of the budget to buy a cheap smartphone – she’d been operating off of a borrowed phone this whole time and finally had the means to get her own working phone.
Now Holly began using her phone to seek housing opportunities. With the additional income GiveCard provided her, housing was now certainly a possibility. She got in contact with Metropolitan Housing who managed to find a subsidized-rent unit available in East Boston and pushed her to the top of their waitlist. The unit would cost her just $244 a month, as well as a $160 down payment. There was a game plan. Holly spent most of her second month’s GiveCard funds on the down payment (a one-time purchase of $160 is often far too big for people facing homelessness, if it wasn’t for GiveCard there was no way Holly would have put that much of her money away on just a down payment), with the remaining $90 going again towards groceries.
For her third month, Holly spent basically 100% of her GiveCard income on rent for her new apartment, using her unemployment checks to cover her upkeep and groceries and moving costs. Money was especially tight that month, but she successfully moved into her own, stable, housing.
The simple 3-part pattern underlying this transition is one we see universally across how people plan to spend money from GiveCard interventions.
Stabilize -> Prepare -> Pay Rent
After years of facing homelessness, it took just 3 months of support for Holly to move into her own place.
what can we learn?
The fact that so little money took Holly such a long way is a testament to the power of hope.
1 dollar is 2 dollars is 3 dollars is 4 dollars but a small increment of hope has profound implications for a person. GiveCard did precisely that, it gave Holly enough of an increment of hope that she was able to take firm charge of her own life and shape her way to stable housing. There were no organizations guiding, advising or controlling how Holly allocated her resources. Perhaps this is the greatest outcome of just giving someone money and the freedom and agency to do whatever they want with it – people will take these resources and uplift themselves. This core value of GiveCard showed to be highly effective here.
Holly’s specific demographic is of real interest to us. She was on the fringe of homelessness, but not actively rough sleeping. We spent months of research at GiveCard to come to the conclusion that this population would benefit most from GiveCard’s early interventions. Whilst all of our pilot program participants are at various stages of homelessness, this is an early sign that perhaps people on the fringe of homelessness are a group that greatly benefit from our focus.
$244 is a miraculously low amount to spend for a month’s rent in a city as expensive as Boston. That being said, doing some quick napkin calculations, let’s assume that the housing wasn’t subsidized. We can add $500 to bring her total monthly rent to $744 to match a realistic rent for that area. Assume that all of that $744 came from GiveCard in a year. This would mean that GiveCard would spend $8,928 to house Holly for a whole year if all we did was simply pay for her housing costs. The city of Boston spends roughly $15,000 per homeless individual, per year. This is a strong case for just giving people money – if you’re reading this and you work in Public Policy, shoot me an email.
what’s next for Holly?
The cool part about doing innovative and fresh programs like these is that we have no idea. We’ve decided to extend Holly’s pilot program by 3 more months, giving her a firm end date of GiveCard support on November 24th. Now we just relax once again and trust that she’ll get herself to where she needs to be to support herself come November.
some final thoughts
When we were 2 years into the GiveCard journey, still with 0 cards issued and no issuing contracts in place, with just a few thousand dollars in funding and with no direction in sight, I thought about quitting. I finally decided that I would never quit until we’d housed just one person. Once we’d done that, I’d be happy to let everything go. Well we finally housed that person… and I don’t think we’ll be letting go anytime soon.
This journey with Holly has reinvigorated us all and we’re doubling down on this belief that just giving people money and hope is the key to uplifting people from homelessness. We’re going to keep doing just that. GiveCard is pretty tight on funding (always has been) and each and every donation goes a long, long way. Reach out if you can help in some capacity and subscribe to stay in touch on GiveCard’s journey or any other adventures in just giving people money.
Thanks for reading!
Lurein.
P.S. Holly’s name has been anonymized to respect her privacy!