Smaller programs focused at the city level for starters. A lot is accelerating in these crisis times.

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Mayors in Los Angeles, Atlanta and nine other U.S. cities said Monday they will work to launch universal basic income pilot programs, a growing sign that political leaders are beginning to take the idea of guaranteed income seriously in the wake of the pandemic.

The mayors of Los Angeles; Oakland, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Tacoma, Washington, Newark, New Jersey; Saint Paul, Minnesota; Jackson, Mississippi; Compton, California; Shreveport, Louisiana and Stockton, California, have joined Mayors For A Guaranteed Income, a coalition advocating for UBI policies, or the idea of giving out recurring cash payments to all individuals without any strings attached.

Mayors For A Guaranteed Income was founded by Michael Tubbs, the 29-year-old mayor of Stockton who launched one of the first guaranteed income pilots in the U.S. last year, along with the Economic Security Project, a non-profit supporting the idea of creating an income floor for all Americans.

Though the coalition will advocate collectively for a guaranteed income and share information, each city will launch their own pilot with separate funding streams, either by creating a working group to find room in the city budget or by forming public/private partnerships, Tubbs told Forbes.

Tubbs said the pandemic and the unrest caused by the death of George Floyd, who was allegedly apprehended for using a counterfeit $20 bill before he was killed, pushed him to announce the coalition now.

“It’s taken COVID-19 where direct cash payments are part of the solution offered by the federal government, so I just thought the time was right to organize mayors around the idea because we live in a time of pandemics,” Tubbs said. “If it’s not COVID-19 this year, it’ll be an earthquake next year, a hurricane the year after or fire. Folks need to build economic resilience in our cities now.”