May 7th, 2025
The Honorable Buffy Wicks Chair, Assembly Appropriations Committee 1021 O Street, Suite 8220 Sacramento, CA 95814
The Honorable Alex Lee Chair, Assembly Human Services Committee 1020 N Street, Room 124 Sacramento, CA 95814
RE: Support for AB 1357 – Exempting guaranteed income from public benefit calculations - SPONSOR
Dear Chairs Wicks and Lee,
On behalf of mBOLDen Change (formerly My New Red Shoes), we strongly support AB 1357, which would exempt guaranteed income payments from consideration when determining eligibility for public benefit programs.
Our organization has witnessed firsthand how guaranteed income can offer stability, dignity, and choice to families navigating economic hardship. We’ve run two guaranteed income pilots—one supporting immigrant survivors of violence and another providing direct cash to low-income high school-aged youth. Through both pilots, we have seen the power of guaranteed income as a transformative tool, helping individuals and families to cover essential costs—like housing, food, healthcare, and education— and to build savings.
However, a critical flaw in our current safety net undermines this promise. Californians receiving guaranteed income while also enrolled in critical public benefit programs like Medi-Cal and CAPI are often penalized with reduced or lost benefits. This phenomenon, known as the “benefits cliff,” creates an impossible choice. In fact, several eligible participants declined to join our pilots out of fear that even modest guaranteed income payments could jeopardize their access to vital safety net programs. Instead of allowing these financial supports to complement each other, our current benefits system pits them against one another—eroding the impact of both public and private anti-poverty efforts.
California has taken some steps to mitigate this harm by creating waivers that exempt guaranteed income from eligibility calculations for two specific public benefit programs: CalWORKs and CalFresh. AB 1357 builds on this progress by extending exemptions to additional vital public programs—including Medi-Cal, the California Food Assistance Program (CFAP), the General Assistance Program, Kinship Guardianship Assistance Payment, the Adoption Assistance Program (AAP), and the Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI)—ensuring that anti-poverty strategies work in alignment, not at odds, with one another.
In summary, AB 1357:
- Allows recipients to access guaranteed income without jeopardizing critical public benefits on which they rely;
- Supports families moving toward lasting financial independence; and
- Maximizes the return on public investments.
This commonsense reform removes barriers that currently undermine promising anti-poverty efforts, ensures that guaranteed income programs can achieve their intended outcomes, and helps to create a more coherent approach to poverty reduction in California.
We strongly support this important legislation.
Sincerely,
Board Chair & Executive Director mBOLDen Change (formerly My New Red Shoes)