In 2023, Tabithalee N. Howard — a lifelong Cambridge resident and mother of three — was among roughly 6,000 residents receiving a monthly stipend through the city’s Rise Up program, an initiative intended to help offset the high cost of living.

But last February, the payments stopped. The shift after, she said, was difficult.

“Things got so much more expensive,” Howard said. “Now I struggle a little bit with maintaining food. I’ve prioritized my bills differently to try to create a little bit of extra money to be able to keep up with that leisure time that I created for my kids.”

Funded with $22 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, Rise Up Cambridge provided $500 per month to low-income families with children over an 18-month period, with the goal of helping cover basic needs….

….In late 2024, the Council began exploring alternatives to Rise Up to continue providing cash assistance to residents amid growing concerns over the city’s budget. The city then contracted [MDRC], a nonprofit research organization, to evaluate the outcomes of the program.

And in a Council committee meeting last week, MDRC researchers presented the final report, finding that Rise Up helped ease residents’ stress and day-to-day financial strain — but left deeper economic inequalities largely unchanged.

The researchers did not evaluate the concrete financial improvements that could have come as a result of the program, but focused largely on the outcomes and experiences reported by residents. The MDRC’s report found that the cash payments increased free time and a sense of empowerment while decreasing stress among recipients, with greater impacts among relatively higher income families in the program….

….Mina Addo, one of four MDRC researchers who authored the report, said that the data from Rise Up aligns with research on other short term programs, finding that most do not show large-scale economic changes.

“Short term cash payments effectively solve some, but not all economic challenges. And from this body of research, we don’t find large-scale changes in economic circumstances,” she said.

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