The Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund is expanding its flagship guaranteed income program, In Her Hands, into additional Atlanta communities this year. The aim is to provide mothers of color juggling the demands of employment, housing, and raising children with a baseline minimum income, so they can climb the economic ladder to greater stability.

The In Her Hands pilot initiative, which started in fall 2022, currently serves 650 mothers of color in the Old Fourth Ward, College Park, and rural Clay-Randolph-Terrell Counties, southwest of Albany. With a new $6.2 million grant from the Arthur Blank Foundation, the GRO Fund will serve 200 additional mothers in the English Avenue and Vine City neighborhoods this year. 

Each participant receives an average of $850 per month for two years that they can use to pay down debt, buy groceries, cover childcare, or anything else that will bolster their economic stability. To be eligible, their income must be less than twice the federal poverty level, which amounts to $40,880 for a family of two.

It’s the first guaranteed income program of its kind in Georgia, arising from one of the top recommendations in the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative’s Building Black Wealth report for closing the city’s sharp racial wealth divide. 

The report found that white Atlanta families have a median household income of $83,722–three times higher than Black families’ median income of $28,105. As a result, white Atlanta households have a staggering 46 times more wealth than Black households: $238,355 for white families, compared to just $5,180 for Black ones. 

Our look into the In Her Hands Initiative is part three of a series analyzing Atlanta’s racial wealth gap, baby bonds as a potential solution to increase Black wealth–and now, guaranteed income. To learn more, Atlanta Civic Circle spoke with Tamicka Royal, one participant who’s a flight attendant for a subsidiary of American…