A Day in the Life of Vilma Cabrera

The day in December 2023 that Vilma Cabrera found out she was one of only 100 families in the City of Alexandria, Virginia, chosen out of a lottery to receive a $500 a month guaranteed income for the next year, she nearly collapsed with relief. She was already months behind on rent. She had, she says, been “going through a lot.”

Vilma, 33, is a single mother with two children and little support—after an acrimonious divorce, her ex-husband agreed to give her sole custody only if she didn’t ask for child support. When she found out about what felt like, literally, winning the lottery that December day, her four-year-old son Daniel—who was four months old when her husband walked out—had just been diagnosed with autism. He spoke about 40 words in a mix of English and Spanish. One of them, she worried, sounded like “bitches,” when he was trying to say “princess” for Princess Peach, a character from the Mario Brothers video games he loves. “It’s hard for me to know what he wants.”

Not long after the diagnosis, Vilma submitted all the paperwork she thought was needed to schedule an appointment with a specialist. But by late April, she was still waiting to hear back from them. Across the U.S., it’s typical to wait three-to-six months to see a neuropsychologist, the specialists who are most knowledgeable about disorders like autism and ADHD. This is especially true for families who struggle financially and receive Medicaid benefits, like Vilma’s family, and are therefore limited to only a few major medical centers that take a wide variety of insurance plans. While she waits for more guidance from specialists, Vilma is often unsure of her parenting decisions. She doesn’t want to be too hard on Dani—something her mother often accuses her of—but she also thinks it’s important that Dani understands that it’s wrong to say rude words or hit people to get their attention.

Before she learned of the guaranteed basic income lottery, Vilima had been struggling to keep her family afloat. For most of her adult life, she was used to working 80 hours a week, juggling two full-time jobs, making $18 an hour, relying on her sister and other nearby family members for child care, and feeling guilty for rarely spending time with Dani and Allison, now 12. But in early 2023, she’d had to cut way back on work to care for her 72-year-old mother, Maria, an immigrant from Honduras, who was recovering from colon cancer surgery and managing Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, hearing loss, and mobility limitations. With painful osteoporosis, her mother struggled to walk, and the dramatic change in her health, self-sufficiency, and lifestyle led to bouts of depression.

At the time, her mother had no health insurance, and Vilma was faced with steep medical bills she couldn’t pay. She searched until she found a free clinic in Charlottesville, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from her home just outside Washington, D.C. For months that year, she woke at 4 a.m. and left by 5 to get her mother to the clinic when it opened at 8 one, two, or sometimes three times a week. A friend helped her children get to school while Vilma was with her mother.

Vilma had to quit her morning part-time job to care for her mother. Then, once Allison came home from middle school, Vilma left her mother in the young girl’s care and left for the 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. shift as a front desk concierge at an office building in downtown Washington, D.C. Vilma would leave bubbling pots of Café El Indio, a strong coffee from her mother’s native Honduras, mixed with Maxwell House and a hunk of brown sugar-like panela on the stove for her mother to drink. She’d also have another pot bubbling with a hearty soup of carrots, potatoes, and other vegetables, made with beef tongue or heart for dinner when she could afford it, following traditional family recipes. Allison knew how to make tortillas—Vilma’s mother had taught her children that as long as they had tortillas and a little salt for flavor, they could always survive.

Despite the medical struggles, Vilma was doing OK financially until the summer of 2023. “I was not in the negative," she says. "Everything was steady.” Then, her luck changed. In August, someone crashed into her car. Someone, she says, without insurance. Her car was totaled, but she wasn’t compensated. After searching online, she found another car on Facebook Marketplace, but she had to borrow the $2,300 from friends to pay for it. That was when she began to fall behind on her $1,485 monthly rent.

Two months later, in October, a man came into the office building where she worked the front desk, pulled out a gun, pointed it in her face, and demanded money. She’d just withdrawn $2,700 in cash from the bank—clearing out her entire account—so she could pay down her back rent and late fees later that day. “I just gave him my wallet,” she says. She lost it all.

The experience shook her badly. She began to have panic attacks. “I had diarrhea. I was so nervous. I didn’t feel safe," she says. "I felt like I would lose my life and not just my money.”

She decided to quit.

“I left everything. I said, ‘I’m not coming back.’”

She hunkered down in her apartment, afraid to venture out. She began visiting the local food bank. A case worker there helped her become certified as a full-time paid caregiver for her mother, Maria, who, as a long-time U.S. resident and green card holder, was finally approved for Medicaid. (After a five-year waiting period, Medicaid is available to many “qualified non-citizens,” such as green card-holding lawful permanent residents.) Officially employed through a care agency, Vilma was paid less than she was used to by the government-funded program—$15 an hour for working full-time from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. In truth, Vilma says her daily care work for her mother—and her children—starts well before seven and ends long after three. But still, the payments have helped.

Then, the next month, in November, a water pipe broke in the ground-floor apartment where she and her family had lived for four years, and her home began to flood. No one answered when she called the management office, so she called 911. First responders shut off the water and the electricity at the apartment. The next day, management turned the electricity back on and brought fans. “But the carpet, the walls—everything was still damaged. I lost food. Everything,” she says. Her renter’s insurance covered two nights in a hotel room, and the management company put her up in a temporary apartment for a few more days. When she returned to her home, hoping to move back in, the carpets were still wet and moldy – which kicked off her asthma. The walls were damp and swollen, and mosquitos swarmed in the humidity. Her requests to repair the apartment went unanswered. The management company said the only available apartments were on the second or third floor, with no elevator. Climbing that many stairs would have been impossible for her mother.

So Vilma moved the family, even though she knew that would ruin her credit. She found a basement apartment in another complex a few blocks away where she feels safer. She bought new mattresses, clothes, and appliances to replace the water-logged ones that were ruined. To pay for it all, she tried to make $100 a day delivering orders for Uber Eats after a full day of care work. But she had to stop when the vertigo that comes and goes made driving dangerous. The dizziness started, she says, after a particularly brutal fight with her ex that damaged one of her ears. Vilma again had to borrow money from friends for the security deposit and first month’s rent. “There was a lot that I lost,” she says. “I feel like I’m recovering myself.”

Regretting the Past: “I’m Asking You to Be Better than Me.”

Vilma met her ex-husband when she was 16 years old. Though she was born in the United States, her parents had a troubled marriage, and her mother took Vilma and her older sister back to Honduras when Vilma was seven. At 16, Vilma had just returned to the States with her sister to attend high school. She was living with their older brother when she met her ex. “To be honest, he was my first boyfriend. I was feeling low. I was confused about what love was. I didn’t have anyone to advise me.”

She studied hard and earned good grades. In 11th grade, she was offered a college scholarship if she kept her grades up. “He said if I accept it, we’re finished.” She turned the scholarship down and dropped out of school, as did her ex-husband. They married when she was 19, and she became pregnant at 20. After nearly a decade of turmoil, he left. “At least I don’t have to suffer anymore.”

Vilma blames herself for the way her life has turned out. “I regret it,” she says. “I tell my daughter, ‘You’re so smart. I’m asking you to be better than me. I want you to go to college. I know you’re going to be interested in boys. It could be something beautiful. But it could also be a waste of time.’ I told her to stay focused on her studies. I worry all her friends are players.”

She worries, too, about the impact of bullying on her daughter. Allison struggles with her body image. Vilma noticed that when Allison started middle school, she began purging food and rapidly losing weight. “They call her horse teeth. Ugly," says Vilma.

Vilma thinks her daughter is beautiful and worries Allison can’t see it. She’d like to get Allison braces but has no idea how she’d pay the $8,000 the dentist told her it would cost. She worries Allison is insecure and anxious, in part because she has never recovered from the blow of her father leaving when she was six. “She never understood,” Vilma says.

Allison sometimes dreams about a quinceañera—the traditional coming-of-age celebration for 15-year-old girls in many Latin American and Mexican cultures. “I tell her, ‘I can’t honey," says Vilma. "That’s a lot of money.’”

“I Feel I Had Angels Help Me.”

In January of 2024, Vilma received the first $500 guaranteed income monthly payment from the City of Alexandria—no strings attached. She’d almost forgotten she’d applied to participate in the lottery. A friend told her about it, and though she didn’t really believe her friend, Vilma applied anyway. Unlike so many complicated public benefits programs, it wasn’t that hard to do. The City of Alexandria is one of a number of municipalities nationwide experimenting with guaranteed income pilots. Many, like Alexandria, used federal pandemic aid dollars to fund their pilots. It’s all part of an effort to better help struggling families survive and find their way to stability.

Vilma immediately began putting the money toward rent. She earns $1,765 a month as a caregiver. Rent and utilities cost her $1,700. Without the ARISE payment, the family would barely be able to survive. “ARISE was a blessing. I feel I had angels help me,” she says. “It’s changed my life.”

The family also receives other public benefits, including health insurance through Medicaid and about $300 a month in SNAP food aid. This is significantly more than the $84 a month they received before the pandemic when Vilma juggled two higher-paying jobs.

Dani is still in diapers, though, and SNAP doesn’t pay for anything but food, so Vilma has to spend about $35 a week on diapers. Vilma got Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children benefits, commonly known as WIC, for about six months after Dani was born. He was such a large baby, she says; he needed a lot of formula, and WIC helped cover the cost. Then, the WIC payments stopped, even though qualifying families can receive help paying for formula and milk until a child is five. Vilma doesn’t know why. She says she didn’t know much about public benefits programs or how they work. “I always ask friends,” she says. She’s often told to stay away from benefits programs, especially programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—the safety net program for single mothers with so many rules and so little cash that research shows it can trap people in poverty instead of propelling them out of it. The idea behind guaranteed income is to do the exact opposite—offer money without these restrictions so that families can use the funds to meet whichever needs they identify as the highest priority. “In my community, we always believe what other people say," says Vilma. "And they say if you ask for TANF, they’re going to come after you if you do something bad [like] if your apartment is messy.”

Without the cushion of the guaranteed income, Vilma reflects, “I would have to try to find someone to be with just for finances.” And, she makes clear, she doesn’t want to be with anyone again, not after her troubled life with her ex-husband. “He hurt me so bad. I don’t want to have nobody here,” she says. “I’m grateful we separated. I don’t suffer anymore from his hurtful words and emotions. And physically. But thanks to him, I have my kids.”

Dreaming About Financial Stability So Her Kids “Don’t Have to Suffer”

On a warm April day in the spring of 2024, Vilma ventures out of her apartment, past the purple and red azalea bushes in bloom, to wait with Dani for the 11 am school bus that takes him to a special preschool program for autistic children. Allison is at school. Vilma’s mother, swathed in blankets, sleeps on a twin bed in the living room of the apartment. Dani’s long, thick, curly locks bounce as he dances on his toes while they wait. She worries that her neighborhood is a dangerous place with drug addicts lurking in the apartment building hallways. While waiting, she recounts how a dead body was found recently just down the street.

As her smiling child boards the bus and waves goodbye, Vilma confesses that she’s become afraid to leave her apartment after being robbed at gunpoint. She’s installed a camera that buzzes every time someone walks by her front door and another inside in case someone breaks in. “I don’t want to risk opening the door and not knowing who’s there,” she says. “I’m afraid to go out to do the laundry. I don’t like small places. I feel anxious.”

She quickly slips back into the haven of her basement apartment. Though she tries to hide her fear from Allison, Vilma struggles to go grocery shopping. When she does, she buys in bulk, so she won’t have to make many trips. The wire floor-to-ceiling shelves in the kitchen are stocked with enormous bags of rice, bulk beans, bananas, pallets of water, and gallon-size bottles of cooking oil. Bulk packages of toilet paper and paper towels perch on shelves in the bedroom Vilma shares with her two children – she and Dani share the double bed while Allison sleeps on a mattress on the floor.

Her mother’s wheelchair sits in the cluttered bedroom, along with a scatter of shoes, toys, clothes, electronics, a bike Dani got from the Salvation Army, and the piles of unopened packages ordered by her mother. Vilma calls her a “shopaholic” who buys new things in the hopes that shiny, new possessions will make her feel better.

In the small living room, a folding table is piled with medications, supplements, lotions, and fresh juice for her mother. Big bright blue plastic barrels line the wall under the TV. They’re filled with clothes, shoes, and other items that Vilma and her sister plan to ship to their family in Honduras. An array of chairs, from the tiny plastic one Dani favors to the large office chair Vilma uses, line the other walls. A pillow reads: “Beyond Blessed.”

After Dani leaves, Vilma checks on her sleeping mother and begins to prepare lunch for her. As she shapes tortillas, turning them expertly in her hands, she admits that most days, she feels overwhelmed just trying to get through the day. Dani’s untreated autism. Allison nearing the age where she felt she herself went wrong. Her mother’s illnesses. Money. Vilma has a referral for a CT scan that could help doctors understand how to treat her vertigo, but she hasn’t found the time to go. She’s been trying to navigate the complicated application for her mother’s U.S. citizenship without the help of a lawyer, which she can’t afford. Sometimes, she thinks it would be easier if she had a man to help her. But after her experience with her ex, “I don’t want to have anybody here. I feel safe with just me and my kids now.”

Sometimes, at the end of her long days, Vilma lets herself dream about the future. Her plans aren’t grand. She’d like to get her GED and finish what she started all those years ago. When she has the time, she studies from a prep booklet. She’s failed the test three times in English but is considering trying again in Spanish. For her mother, she hopes she at least won’t get any sicker. She dreams that maybe, one day, she could have her own house. But until then, she says, “Just being stable financially in a way that my kids don’t have to suffer a lot.”

The ARISE guaranteed income pilot program—and the pandemic stimulus checks and short-term monthly Child Tax Credit payments—have given her some breathing room, and not just financially, she says. It’s allowed her to have more time with her family. “Without it, I don’t think I could be handling this year,” she says. “It’s going to be tough when this year ends.”

She’s managed to pay back most of what she owes her friends. But she still has a collections agency after her for about $10,000 in back rent on her water-logged old apartment. She sought help from a local community advocacy organization, but they said it was too late—they could only have helped her if she had stayed and fought for the management company to make things right. “They said I shouldn’t have left. But I couldn’t stay.”

She pulls out her phone and calls up her bank account balance.

$5.32.

“It used to be worse,” she says. “I guess that’s my dream. I wish I could tell you at your next visit that it’s $500.”