Chicago is set to launch a big guaranteed income pilot
Mayor Lori Lightfoot explains why her new cash assistance program will be a critical part of the city’s broader anti-poverty agenda.
In February 2020, before COVID-19 arrived in full force in the U.S., Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot gathered politicians, academics, and ordinary Chicagoans to an anti-poverty summit called Solutions Toward Ending Poverty, or STEP, to kick off a mayoral agenda dedicated to finding concrete solutions to “entrenched generational poverty,” Lightfoot says. While many bought into the discourse, critics balked. “Some people looked at me like I had two heads,” she says. “Why is she even talking about these things?”