AI is being used to send some households impacted by Helene and Milton $1,000 cash relief payments

Nearly 1,000 hurricane-affected households in North Carolina and Florida will benefit this week from a new disaster relief program that uses a model not often used by philanthropy in the United States: giving people quick, immediate cash payments.

The nonprofit GiveDirectly plans to send $1,000 payments Friday to some households affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The organization uses an artificial intelligence tool developed by Google to locate areas with high concentrations of poverty and storm damage. On Tuesday, it invited people in those areas to enroll in the program through a smartphone app used to administer SNAP and other government benefits. Donations are then deposited via the app’s debit card.

The approach is intended to provide assistance “in the most streamlined and dignified way possible,” said Laura Keen, senior program manager at GiveDirectly. It takes away much of the burden of applying for jobs and aims to empower people to decide for themselves what their most pressing needs are.

It won’t reach everyone who needs help, but GiveDirectly hopes the program can be a model that makes disaster relief faster and more effective. “We’re always trying to increase the share of disaster relief provided in the form of cash, whether that’s through FEMA or private actors,” Keen said.

The influx of clothing, blankets and food that typically arrives after a disaster can meet real needs, but in-kind donations cannot cover a hotel room during an evacuation or childcare while schools are closed.

“There is an elegance to monetization that allows individuals in these types of circumstances to solve for their unique needs, which will certainly be very different from the needs of their neighbors,” Keen says. She added that getting their hands on money quickly can protect them from predatory lending and reduce credit card debt.

The organization uses direct payments to fight poverty around the world, but first experimented with cash disaster payments in the US in 2017, when it gave money to households affected by Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico . At the time, GiveDirect signed people up personally and later handed out activated debit cards. The process took a few weeks.

Now that work is done in just a few days – remotely. A team from Google is using its SKAI machine-based learning tool to map the worst-hit areas by comparing aerial images from before and after the disaster. GiveDirectly uses another Google-developed tool to compare these findings with poverty data. It sends the target areas to Propel, an electronic benefits transfer app, which invites users in those places to enroll.

“They don’t have to find a pile of documentation proving their eligibility,” Keen said. “We already know they are eligible.”

Still, focusing on areas with many damaged buildings will not help all low-income households devastated by disaster. Also, those who have already signed up for government benefits will not be contacted, as not all poor people sign up for them and undocumented residents are not eligible. People without a smartphone do not have access to the app. Propel serves only 5 million of the 41 million people enrolled in SNAP benefits.

In North Carolina, true Electricity supply has still not been restored in some communities after Hurricane Helene, having a smartphone makes no difference without a way to power it and a signal to connect to.

Keen said GiveDirectly is aware of the shortcomings of this model. She said some issues could be alleviated with a hybrid model that uses both remote and in-person enrollment. But the limitations also concern financing. To date, GiveDirectly has raised $1.2 million for this campaign, including a $300,000 donation from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

Despite the pitfalls, GiveDirectly hopes its model will spark ideas for other direct payment programs.

FEMA revised its own cash assistance program, called Serious Needs Assistance, in January. The agency increased the payments from $500 to $750 ($770 when the new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1) and eliminated the requirement that states apply for the aid first.

Across all states affected by Helene and Milton, more than 693,000 households have received Serious Needs Assistance as of October 24, totaling more than $522 million, according to a FEMA spokesperson.

But the program still requires households to sign up, which then proved problematic wrong information about the program ran rampant in the weeks after Helene. In places with a high cost of living, the $750 might not go far.

Technology could help FEMA improve its system, said Chris Smith, who led FEMA’s Individual Assistance program from 2015 to 2022 and is now director of individual assistance and disaster housing at the consulting firm IEM. “I think we need to open our imaginations that there may be other ways to quickly identify need and quickly qualify.”

But Smith cautions that a government-funded program doesn’t have the same license to experiment as a philanthropic program. “Ultimately, there must be accountability for how any level of government provides assistance to individuals. People will want to know that, and that level of certainty is very important.”

The government has experimented with other forms of unconditional financial support, such as when it expanded the child tax credit to a monthly direct deposit in 2021. That program briefly reduced the child poverty rate by nearly half before expiring.

Research on guaranteed income programs shows that recipients spend the money on their needs, said Stacia West, founder and director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania. “There is no one better at budgeting than someone living in poverty,” she said.

In a study that tracked the spending of 9,000 participants in more than 30 guaranteed income programs in the U.S., the Center for Guaranteed Income Research found that most of the money is spent on retail goods, food and groceries, and transportation.

West said one-time cash payments can be a huge help for families recovering from disaster, but the money can make a bigger difference if given over a longer period of time.

That happened in two American disasters. In 2016, Dolly Parton funded a program that donated $1,000 a month for six months to people in Tennessee who lost their homes to the Great Smoky Mountains wildfires. The People’s Fund of Maui, a program sponsored by Oprah and Dwayne Johnson, gave 8,100 adults affected by the 2023 Maui wildfires $1,200 per month for six months.

Keen said GiveDirectly would be happy to implement such a program if it has the funding, especially because long-term assistance could help people build future resilience. “So you are not only repairing your home, but also strengthening it to a level that is better protected next time.”

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