Oakland Giving Low Income Families $500 a month.…But Not If You’re White
- Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced race-based program to give families of color $500 monthly checks
- Half of the $500 grants will be to families earning under $30,000, in the predominantly ‘BIPOC’ East Oakland area
- The program, funded by wealthy private donors, explicitly excludes poor white families
- An estimated 10,000 of Oakland’s 435,000 population are white residents who live in poverty, defined by earning less than $12,880
- Many of the wealthy white city residents are ‘young transplants’, who move to the Bay Area for high paying jobs in tech and finance
A program to give $500 monthly checks to low-income families of color in Oakland, California, has been criticized for explicitly excluding the 10,000 white residents living in poverty in the city.
The lottery system, funded by private philanthropists, will see the no-strings-attached checks go to households with an annual income of less than $59,000 if they have at least one child. The other half of the $500 checks will go to those earning under $30,000.
According to data from an Oakland Equity Indicators Report, cited by officials to justify favoring people of color, white households earn about three times that of African-American ones.
The same report states around 8 per cent of the city’s white residents, approximately 10,000 people, live in poverty.
AC