San Francisco mulls reparation plans including $5m for Black residents

San Francisco lawmakers will consider a range of options on Tuesday to provide reparations to Black people for decades of racist treatment by the city government, from providing reparation tax credits to helping finance debt forgiveness for Black families.

But the more than 100 recommendations also include many more modest options, from offering Black residents grants to maintain their homes, to exempting Black businesses from certain city taxes, to funding community centers focused on Black history and culture. Other proposals are more sweeping, including guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years for Black families or homes in San Francisco for just $1 a family.

Adopting any of the recommendations would make San Francisco the first major US city to fund reparations, though the effort faces steep financial headwinds and criticism from conservatives.

An estimated 50,000 Black people currently live in San Francisco, but it is not clear how many of them would be eligible for financial reparations. The recommendations lay out a number of possible criteria, such as living in San Francisco during a certain time period and descending from someone. .

The idea of paying compensation for historic wrongs has taken off across the country, with California in 2020 becoming the first state in the US to form a reparations task force. The idea has not been taken up at the federal level.

The Chicago suburb of Evanston became the first US city to fund reparations in 2021, using tax money from the sale of recreational marijuana. The city gave money to qualifying people for home repairs, property down payments and interest or late penalties due on property in the city. In December, the Boston city council approved a reparations study task force.