Maybe rental assistance? https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/20/mountain-view-adopts-...
I know how affluent much of Mountain View is, but surely there are some that are struggling.
I know how affluent much of Mountain View is, but surely there are some that are struggling.
It's not a solvable problem by a single city, even if you believe in cash transfers/UBI.
> you'd only have enough money for $10k/yr for 5,000 individuals
5,000 out of the 80,000 total individuals seems to be a sizable number, no? Even 2,500 seems like a lot when your population is so small. Nobody claimed the problem is solvable by a single city, but it seems like you could easily make a difference at the margin.
> lots of people from neighboring cities would want to move there to claim the subsidy.
You could have some process that gives preference to existing residents of a certain period of time, I doubt many poor people living in the area would move to a city and live there for a certain time just for a chance to get a rent subsidy.
This problem of "people moving here to claim benefits" is both generally overstated and pretty easily solved by a number of cities.
In addition to people moving in, you have people paying high taxes who will move out to neighboring cities without this tax. I don't want to pay a 5% wealth transfer tax.
This idea is based on some sort of pseudo-socialist view of the world, except implemented at the worst possible level (municipal). Cities deal with keeping crime down, building roads, etc. They're not here to implement a socialist wealth transfer program.