Stockton, a suburban outpost of about 310,000 people in California, may seem at a first glance like an unlikely place for a social experiment at the cutting edge of political thought.
A moderate Central Valley city sandwiched between the overwhelmingly liberal Bay Area to the west and more conservative and agricultural counties to the east, it has never been seen as a political bellwether for a state increasingly known for its progressive politics.
But Stockton has faced levels of economic hardship that separate it from many of the thriving municipalities just an hour or two away: it was the largest in the country to declare bankruptcy in the years after the recession, and it still suffers from high rates of poverty, foreclosures and violent crime.