Fairfax County’s 18-month experiment in providing at-risk households with monthly cash stipends has wrapped up, but it will still be some time before its successes and shortcomings are fully fleshed out.
“While the project itself is finalized, the research is ongoing,” Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik said.
Palchik chairs the board’s Health and Human Services Committee, which received an update on the Economic Mobility Pilot yesterday (Tuesday).
Conducted by the county in conjunction with United Way of the National Capital Area and other partners, the pilot program provided 180 households with $750 monthly payments for 18 months, starting in October 2023.
“The goal is not to expand public assistance” but to provide “pathways to prosperity,” said Scott Mengebier of United Way of the National Capital Area.
Participants were randomly selected from among county residents who fit into a category that United Way calls “ALICE”: asset-limited, income-constrained, employed residents.
Those households earn more than poverty-level wages but less than what they need to cover basic living costs, which are estimated by United Way to be roughly $10,173 per month or $122,076 per year for a family of four in Fairfax.
The monthly estimate includes $2,558 for housing, $2,583 for child care, $1,373 for taxes, $820 for healthcare, $1,591 for food and $332 for transportation, plus miscellaneous expenses.
About 24% of county households fall into the ALICE economic category, in addition to the 5% of county residents living in poverty, Mengebier said.
“Behind those numbers are real people,” he said.
A final report on the pilot program is slated for release in January 2026. Based on analysis to date, the monthly stipends delivered “clear, positive impacts,” said Amy Best, a sociologist at George Mason University who is working on the project.
Using anecdotal evidence, she pointed to participants improving their budgeting and credit scores, beginning to put away savings, buying healthier food, participating in community events, getting more sleep and having time to exercise.
Combined, those improvements are providing “transformational effects” on participants, Best said.
The initiative was supported by federal COVID-19 recovery funds and the county’s Human Services Innovation Fund.
With the Trump administration proposing deep cuts to social services funding, including programs that help families and children, and the county facing its own budget challenges, the future of a guaranteed-income initiative seems uncertain at best.
“We’re a long way from tackling that,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said on the possibility of a permanent basic income program.
He suggested an alternative would be to use information gleaned from the report to support families in the ALICE category through existing county resources without imposing “a hundred hoops to jump through.”
“It’s really important that we understand … what are the nuances of what we have in Fairfax,” McKay said.
The June 3 discussion ran out of time before a number of supervisors had a chance to ask questions or make comments. Among them was Springfield’s Pat Herrity, the lone Republican on the board.
After the meeting, Herrity told FFXnow that he doesn’t believe the guaranteed-income effort will address root causes of economic challenges in Fairfax County.
“Instead of focusing on another program, we should be tackling the drivers of the issues experienced by pilot participants: unaffordable childcare and housing, which are challenges we continue to hear about from the majority of our residents,” he said.
Palchik, who chairs the health committee, noted that the issue is countywide in nature.
“It’s not just a few pockets,” she said, adding that the county’s goal is to become “better and smarter” in addressing residents’ needs.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
