Eighteen Richmond families each will receive $12,000 over two years in a pilot program testing whether a guaranteed income would make a difference in helping them achieve financial stability.

Mayor Levar M. Stoney announced the experimental Richmond Resilience Initiative on Oct. 29 that involves paying a $500 a month stipend for 24 months to the selected working families.

The city is joining with the Robins Foundation to cover the two-year cost of $216,000. The city’s share is being drawn from federal CARES Act dollars.

While unidentified, the chosen families were randomly selected from clients of the city’s Office of Community Wealth Building, the mayor said. All are working or seeking work, have children in the household and currently earn too much to qualify for federal income benefits, but not enough to cover all household expenses.

The mayor called the initiative a potential “first step toward state and national policy that will help qualified, working families in need to close the gap between the social safety net and sustainable employment.”

The Richmond test is modeled after a larger pilot involving 125 families in Stockton, Calif., launched in 2018 by Mayor Michael Tubbs. The program has since expanded to a few other cities, including Compton, Calif.

The money is given to the families with no strings attached and no requirements. “The pandemic has proven that for many families, $500 can be the difference between staying sheltered or losing a home, buying groceries or going hungry,” Mayor Stoney said.

Based on the Stockton experience, those chosen to participate are expected to spend the majority of money on food, rent, utilities, child care and basic necessities.

Mayor Stoney said research from Stockton shows positive impacts on recipients’ health and education with virtually no impact on the willingness to work.

The Robins Foundation, which led an initiative that provided one-time grants to 2,600 Richmond area families after the pandemic began, stated, “This program is a fresh approach to addressing a complex situation.

“Poverty and educational achievement are linked,” and the foundation listed the direct subsidy approach as one possibility “to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.”

Mayor Stoney recently joined Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a coalition of more than 25 U.S. mayors committed to piloting universal income programs to promote economic empowerment.

“The Richmond Resilience Initiative pilot will both support hard-working families and provide the necessary data points to design policies that promote sustainable economic security and mobility,” said the mayor.

However, there is no indication whether the city or the state will embrace a continuation or expansion of the program once the experiment ends. Stockton is shutting down its program in January.

Indeed, most of the focus and energy on improving family income in recent years has involved advocacy to increase the minimum wage from $12 to $15 an hour, rather than on direct subsidies.

Plans already have been approved in Virginia to start raising the minimum wage next year from the current $7.25 an hour, though the increases over several years will fall significantly short of $15 per hour.

While other states and cities also have approved increases, Republicans in Congress have blocked a national raise for the lowest paid workers.

Supplemental income would be a boon to many. Even before the pandemic, the Federal Reserve found that 40 percent of American families cannot afford a $400 emergency, while other research shows 69 percent of families would face significant hardship if a paycheck were delayed one week.

Richmond has weathered much of the impact from the COVID-19 financial disruption, but plenty of residents are still in distress. According to the online data analytics firm WalletHub, Richmond ranks 47th among the 100 most financially distressed cities and ranks third for the increase in bankruptcies since the pandemic began. A significant chunk of the population also has seen their credit rating erode.