Local leaders and officials are considering how to use city money to restart an income program for families in need next fiscal year.
But as the city faces financial strains and federal cuts from the Donald Trump administration, pulling money from the general budget would force city officials to weigh a new cash assistance program against the needs of existing programs – a move that could result in less monthly cash for families in need.
Rise Up Cambridge, a $22 million direct-income program, relied on funds from federal Covid-recovery money – from the American Rescue Plan Act – to provide monthly $500 payments to Cambridge households with children ages 21 and earning up to 250 percent of the federal poverty line, an amount that would leave families struggling in Cambridge. The program included 1,923 families, or about 7,200 people, according to a presentation to city councillors.
Families enrolled starting in July 2023, and the program ended in February.
City councillor Sumbul Siddiqui, who launched the Rise Up Cambridge program when she was mayor in June 2023, said the Trump administration meant a lot of “unknowns coming for families.”
“Our most vulnerable will be the ones most hurt by what’s happening in the federal government,” Siddiqui said. “Many of us are sitting on the same page as far as wanting to help. I think where there’s not a consensus is: Is this what we should be funding?”
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/25920053-042825-rise-up/?embed=1
Councillors at the Human Services and Veterans Committee meeting on April 17 said they expect the topic to go next to the Finance Committee for shaping, though city manager Yi-An Huang told them he already had “a reasonable sense of the direction and roughly the scope” of a potential next income program costing $6 million to $12 million annually at the same $500 level.
“You wouldn’t want a monthly payment that drops too low. A $200-a-month program is not really substantive enough,” Huang said.
He pointed to options in the presentation by city staff, the Cambridge Community Foundation and Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee, the city’s anti-poverty agency, that suggested three options for a need-based cash-aid program with $500 monthly stipends: One at current levels and costing $11.8 million a year; one reducing need to 150 percent of the federal poverty level, which would drop the number of people helped to 5,195 but reduce costs to $8.6 million annually; and one at the federal poverty level and serving 3,770 residents for $6.3 million annually.
Source of funding
The potential switch to city money from federal money raised questions of whether the direct payments would be illegal under a state “anti-aid amendment,” but a legal opinion received by the committee cleared the way for a program that could be shown to be a public good and included families based on impartial criteria. “I’m glad we’re at the point now where we everyone is sort of on the same page, that we can keep doing this even with with city funds,” councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler said.
Vice mayor Marc McGovern, who worked to implement Rise Up Cambridge when he was a councillor alongside then-mayor Siddiqui and former vice mayor Alanna Mallon, said the program warranted dipping into the millions of dollars in “unreserved” money – often referred to as “free cash” – the city had built up in past years, mainly for emergencies or one-time expenses. “When I look back at some of the things we’ve used free cash on, this probably fits the definition more,” McGovern said, considering the risk of federal policies to some residents.
That met resistance from councillor Cathie Zusy, who said any cash-aid program should come from traditional budget sources and be funded by cuts made elsewhere. “I want us to remain fiscally strong,” she said.
Wherever funding came from, staff said it would take around half a year to get a new program running. And despite the discussion around a successor program to Rise Up Cambridge, there is no guarantee it’s coming back, McGovern said.
How will residents keep up?
Tina Alu, executive director of the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee said the program had helped “cushion” the straining budgets of families in need.
“It allowed them to spend more time with their children, reducing the stress in the household,” Alu said.
For residents such as Jeffery Thomas, cash assistance was a “lifesaver,” he said during the council’s committee meeting.
Thomas, who is 61, has been living in Cambridge on and off since 1989. While he was between jobs, cash assistance helped him pay rent, saving him from being evicted and allowing to pay other expenses while his daughter attended the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.
“My family and I are now prospering, and it was really wonderful to be held by what is my child’s hometown, where she’s grown up and is about to graduate,” he said during the meeting.
If a cash assistance program were to cease or be reduced, families in need may be forced to cut back on expenses such as groceries, and may rely more on the food pantries, Alu said.
City budget hearings held in the Finance Committee begin May 8. Councillors will hear from dozens of departments on where to appropriate money and how much, forcing them to consider the city’s priorities for the next fiscal year.
But, for McGovern, his top priority is making sure vulnerable families get the support they need amid the looming threat of federal cuts.
“There are going to be cuts to all kinds of things that folks in our community need to survive,” he said. That’s part of the reason why he thinks the Trump administration is so awful.
“They are to be responsible for people dying around this country because of what they’re doing. And is the city willing to step up? And how much can we step up?”
Competing interests
Come next fiscal year, some of the biggest priorities for the council will be supporting families in Section 8 housing and the city’s unhoused population.
Already, the city is bracing for the Trump administration to cut about $4 million from the housing authority, a move that would hurt about 128 families in Cambridge who get housing vouchers.
The city is considering more funding for its 58-bed Transitional Wellness Center Shelter for people without homes. The center, which costs about $3 million to run annually, was originally funded by Arpa money, but those funds are drying up too.
On top of that, the Trump administration’s decision to freeze more than $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and contracts to Harvard University could have rippling effects on the rest of the city.
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