Ask and you (hopefully) shall receive.

The city will officially be backing a request to ask the province to be part of a pilot project to reduce poverty and its effects in the community, but won’t know if it will be included — or if the pilot program even goes ahead — until later this year.

On Monday night city council passed a resolution to support the government of British Columbia’s intent to pilot one or several guaranteed basic income approaches to reduce and prevent poverty in B.C., and called on the government to include Nelson as the subject of any such guaranteed basic income pilot study.

Coun. Val Warmington — who brought the resolution forward on behalf of the Nelson at its Best committee — said the proposed basic guaranteed income is a better approach and a more efficient approach to dealing with poverty than the many different ‘pots’ people on social assistance have to access right now.

In the long run universal guaranteed income could save on administration for the provincial government, she said, as well as providing security and raising the quality of life for those on assistance.

“And Nelson is perfect as a pilot community in that it is self contained and has a lot of social services already, and a lot of data so it would be easy to track how well the program would do,” Warmington pointed out.

There are no guarantees the program would go ahead, she added, or if Nelson would be considered as there are many other communities potentially vying for the pilot program.

“It is unknown when the provincial government may make a decision to proceed with this project, therefore the decision may impact future councils who may not be in favour of the pilot study,” read a city staff report to council.

Nelson at its Best representative Warmington along with Dr. Lee MacKay (representing the Kootenay Boundary Medical Association of Family Practice) provided a presentation to council at the Feb. 19 committee-of-the-whole meeting regarding universal guaranteed income.

The presentation noted that a May 2017 document outlining the provincial NDP-Green Party agreement that stated that if the government was intent on improving housing, health and employment it would design and implement a basic income pilot test.

Nelson is in need of some help, said Warmington. The city has the second highest percentage of low-income residents — pegged at 19.3 per cent — of any municipality in B.C., while the province currently has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

A guaranteed income would help reduce the gap between rich and poor in Nelson, said Warmington.

“We are really stressing that Nelson would be the ideal recipient of such a study,” she said. “We need policies to narrow the gap between the richest and the poorest amongst us in community.

“Because it is really about putting money in the hands of people who need it, and having them use it accordingly, rather than putting it in the hands of people who already have it and having it trickle down.”

A guaranteed income would mean a regular stream of money to help residents pay for basic living needs, as well as health care. The province has confirmed it is looking to study what it would take to provide a basic income for residents, rolling out a plan in several communities as pilot projects.

Not only does Nelson have a high rate of poverty, compared to both the province and the federal (average), but the city’s cost of living is very high, said Warmington.

Poverty forces many residents of Nelson to make hard economic choices — between rent and medicine, food and transportation, childcare and employment opportunities — moving towards a self-sufficient future versus just getting through today, she said.

In 2015, 19.3 per cent of Nelson residents lived in poverty compared to 15.5 per cent of B.C. residents overall. Most of those people living in poverty are working adults, with 18.6 per cent of working age adults (18-64 years) or 1,230 individuals living in poverty in Nelson compared to 14.8 per cent for B.C.

The numbers are more disturbing for child poverty in the city, said Warmington, with child poverty (0-17 years) in Nelson rising from 21.6 per cent in 2012 to 24.1 per cent in 2015. The rate for B.C. overall was 18.5 per cent.As well, 16.7 per cent of Nelson seniors (65 and over) lived in poverty in 2015 compared to 14.9 per cent for B.C.