The city of San Francisco is currently weighing a reparations draft proposal that could include $5 million lump-sum payments to eligible Black people. But that’s not all, as reports from the Associated Press and NBC News detail that the controversial bill has more than 100 recommendations attached to it.
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On March 14 both the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee, reportedly met for a presentation of the draft report that was released in December. Provisions of the report included recommendations such as offering grants to buy and maintain homes and exempting Black businesses from paying taxes. Other major measures include the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years, and family homes in San Francisco priced at just $1. This first preliminary hearing serves as a litmus test for the board’s willingness to advance plans outlined in the draft, which are considered to be the most comprehensive reparations recommendations nationwide. The hearing will reportedly be the first chance the board will get to vote to change, adopt or reject any or all the recommendations outlined in the draft. The committee’s final report is due in June.
There are currently fewer than 50,000 Black people living in San Francisco, accounting for about six percent of the city’s residents. In contrast, Black people once represented more than 13 percent of the population in San Francisco. Now, Black people make up an astonishing 38 percent of the city’s homeless population, according to NBC News. It’s currently unclear how many would be eligible for the payouts. If the proposal were to be accepted, residents will reportedly be evaluated on eight eligibility requirements. One of the key requirements would mandate that a person must be at least 18 years old and has identified as “Black/African American” in public documents for at least 10 years.
Other criteria include “being born in or migrating to San Francisco between 1940 and 1966 and living in the city for at least 13 years; being displaced from San Francisco by urban renewal between 1954 and 1973, or the descendant of someone who was; being a person incarcerated by the war on drugs, or their descendant; or being a descendant of an enslaved U.S. person before 1865.”
California as a whole has become a leader in the push to deliver compensation for slavery after it became the first state to form a reparations task force in 2020. Conversations about reparation recommendations, including monetary payouts, continue for the state of California — which will deliver its own reparations report to the Legislature on July 1. Even still, San Francisco’s reparations draft has been met with fears about financial feasibility in addition to conservative opposition about its execution amid San Francisco’s financial deficit and decline of the tech industry. One of the main vantage points that critics of the draft appear to be aligning with is the idea that payouts don’t make sense in a city and state that actually never enslaved Black people.
“This conversation we’re having in San Francisco is completely unserious,” said John Dennis, chair of the San Francisco Republican Party. “They just threw a number up, there’s no analysis. It seems ridiculous, and it also seems that this is the one city where it could possibly pass.”
Eric McDonnell, chair of San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee believes the opposite, though. He actually explained his belief that the proposed $5 million payout recommendation is actually a lower figure than the “harm,” Black people have experienced for centuries warrants, with regard to compensation.
“We are the harmed,” McDonnell said. “If the judge ruled in our favor, the judge would not turn to us and say, ‘Help them figure out how to make this work.’ There’s still a veiled perspective that, candidly, Black folks don’t deserve this. The number itself, $5 million, is actually low when you consider the harm.”
Review specific details of San Francisco’s reparations draft recommendations here.