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San Francisco launches guaranteed basic income program for some transgender residents

Peter Hosey
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Flickr / Creative Commons
City Hall lit up in the colors of the Transgender Pride flag for Transgender Awareness Month.

The program is called the Guaranteed Income For Transgender People, or “G.I.F.T.” Under the program, San Franciscan adults who identify as transgender, non-binary, gender nonconforming, or intersex can apply to receive 1,200 dollars a month in guaranteed income for a year and a half.

The Transgender District and Lyon-Martin Community Health Services, in partnership with municipal departments in San Francisco, will administer the program.

Eligible residents must have a monthly income of no more than $600, and live in both the city and county of San Francisco. Photo ID and proof of residence and income are required, but there are options for undocumented and unhoused applicants.

The program is based on data from the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey, which estimated that 29 percent of trans adults live in poverty, and are nearly twice as likely to be out of work than their cisgender peers.

This is the first program of its kind to target the income gap for trans residents in San Francisco, but the city has piloted other guaranteed income programs in the past: the Abundant Birth Project which provides assistance to Black and Pacific Islander people who are pregnant and the Guaranteed Income Pilot for Artists.

Applications will remain open through December 15 on GIFT’s website.

Alia is a Seattle-raised, Oakland-based cultural worker, DJ, and community archivist, inspired by and belonging to a lineage of Palestinian and Arab women storytellers. She is interested in documenting the histories and contributions of West Asian and North African immigrant communities in the Bay Area. Alia's past audio work can be found in the Arab American National Museum, which houses her multimedia oral history archive of Dearborn, Michigan. In her free time, Alia enjoys hosting her monthly online radio show, Kan Ya Makan, on Moonglow Radio, and DJing various SWANA (Southwest Asian/North African) dance parties in the Bay Area.