San Francisco Reparations to Cost $100 Billion

San Francisco's proposed reparations plan could cost the city over $100 billion, the New York Times reports.

The plan, backed by San Francisco supervisors in March, would dole out $5 million to each Black resident, eliminate all personal debt, guarantee annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years and homes for Black residents for just $1, among other things.

The idea of Black reparations is not new, but the federal government's promise of granting 40 acres and a mule to newly freed slaves was never realized. It wasn't until George Floyd, a Black man, was killed in police custody in 2020 that reparations movements began spreading in earnest across the country.

The state of California and the cities of Boston and San Francisco are among jurisdictions trying to atone not just for chattel slavery, but for decades of racist policies and laws that systemically denied Black Americans access to property, education and the ability to build generational wealth.

It's unclear how the city would pay for the reparations.

The advisory committee that made the recommendations says it is not its job to figure out how to finance San Francisco's atonement and repair.

That would be up to local politicians, two of whom expressed interest Tuesday in taking the issue to voters. San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey said he would back a ballot measure to enshrine reparations in the San Francisco charter as part of the budget. Shamann Walton, the supervisor leading the charge on reparations, supports that idea.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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