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New Orleans wants to pay young people $350 a month. See how the program will work
Nov 11, 2021
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell speaks during at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans on Thursday, November 11, 2021.
New Orleans will pay 125 young people $350 a month for most of next year under a program that seeks to help youth build wealth and boost their financial literacy.
The program is aimed at residents aged 16 to 24 who are neither working nor in school, Mayor LaToya Cantrell and other officials said Thursday.
Those residents will receive the funds through a prepaid bank card provided by Mobility Capital Finance, also called MoCaFi. Charter school networks and other partners will refer program participants to City Hall.
The program will launch in mid-2022 and provide money to young people for 10 months, Cantrell said. The cards that participants receive will double as passes to city recreation centers, and can also be used on public transit and at public libraries.
"This will connect our most vulnerable residents to meaningful financial equity, and efficiently link them to city services through the use of technology," the mayor said.
The program is being funded by Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, which advocates for direct cash payments to impoverished people.
That group was founded in June 2020 by Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California, and the nonprofit Economic Security Project, which supports guaranteed income payments for all Americans. The goal of such payments is to fight poverty and income inequality, advocates say.