San Francisco lawmakers this week proposed reallocating $50 million in taxpayers’ money to set up a reparations office to ensure the city’s black residents receive payments that can total $5 million per person.
San Francisco supervisor Shamann Walton proposed Tuesday the establishment of the office to ensure the vision of the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee is implemented, after making his final recommendation in June. Walton, who created the committee in 2020, was supported by his progressive bosses, Hillary Ronen and Dean Preston. It is unclear when the board of directors will vote on Walton’s proposal.
The pitch will likely dispel any remaining skepticism that San Francisco officials are not serious about the city’s radical and highly unpopular reparations plan. Last week, the full Board of Governors voted in favor of a draft plan to pay each of the city’s black residents $5 million. The proposed office would increase the financial strain on the city, which faces a $728 million budget hole that the mayor warns is likely to get worse as businesses and taxpaying residents flee.
In addition to $5 million in reparations, the committee has proposed subsidizing real estate that would allow black San Francisco residents to buy homes for as little as $1. The committee has also proposed setting up $97,000 in annual payments to today’s low-income Black families for 250 years and paying off all debts owned by Black residents.
San Francisco lawmakers last week condemned taxpayer objections to the task force’s plan as racist, as reparations advocates urged policymakers and the public not to “get bogged down” with the costs. According to analysis by the Hoover Institution, the proposal in its current form would cost each San Francisco household nearly $600,000.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman has slammed his constituents’ fears as an “overheated and irrational response” to the reparations task force’s proposals.
“For those of my constituents who have lost their minds over this proposal, it’s not something we do or would do for anyone else,” Mandelman said. “It’s something we would do for our future, the collective future of all and generations to come.”
The state of California is moving forward with its own reparations plan, which could yield payments of $360,000 per eligible resident. The state’s reparations task force has yet to agree on a number or determine which of California’s 2.5 million black residents would be eligible.
The San Francisco board of directors is scheduled to vote on the final recommendations of the Redress Committee in September. Lawmakers’ vote on the draft plan was delayed a month after Walton got stuck in Colombia, where he was partying at a local Hooters.
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