A Guaranteed Income Program for Community College Students
Sara Weissman
November 21, 2024
The Los Angeles Community College District is experimenting with a new program that gives $1,000 a month to students in health-related fields.
Brenda Olazava, 39, didn’t know if she’d be able to stay enrolled at Los Angeles City College this semester.
She found out she was no longer going to receive a cash benefit from the county for low-income families, which helped pay her rent while she studied for an associate degree in psychology and sociology and worked part-time at the front desk of the college’s counseling department. Money had been tight before for Olazava, a single mother of two children, now 20 and 15. But this time, she thought she might have to discontinue her studies to work full-time.
Then she got an email from the Los Angeles Community College District inviting her to apply for a new form of aid, a guaranteed basic income program called Building Outstanding Opportunities for Students to Thrive, or BOOST. The program would give her, and other students majoring in health-related fields, $1,000 per month for a year, no strings attached. To apply, she had to qualify as low-income by L.A. County standards and report that a lack of money affected her ability to pay college costs or living expenses in the past year, among other requirements. But she qualified and found out she was admitted to the program this week. The first payment is expected to land before Thanksgiving.
