Fact Check: Is San Francisco planning to pay $5 million to each eligible African American resident in reparations?

A San Francisco panel that studies reparations has proposed paying $5 million to each eligible black resident of the city to make amends for the decades of trouble and harm they've had to go through, a report stated on Monday, January 16.

The draft report, issued by the African American Reparations Advisory Committee of San Francisco in December 2022, said:

“A lump sum payment would compensate the affected population…and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy.”

It is estimated that this proposal could cost San Francisco roughly $50 billion against the city's 2022-2023 budget of $14 billion.

The Reparations Committee also proposed to wipe out all debts related to personal and educational credit cards as well as payday loans for African American households.

The panel consisted of 15 members and was established by supervisors in the city in May 2021. A California legislature also created a separate task force to study the reparations.

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Requirements to be eligible for the reparations in San Francisco

The initial requirement to be eligible for the reparation is that an applicant must be 18 and provide identity proof of being African American or black in public documents of at least ten years.

Applicants must also prove that they fulfill two of the eight additional standards, which include being born in San Francisco or having migrated to the city between 1940 and 1996. The second criterion is to have proof of residency in the city for at least 13 years.

The individual also has to be either a direct descendant of someone who was jailed in the failed U.S. War on Drugs or of someone who was enslaved before 1865. If the individual was personally jailed, that would also fulfill the requirement.

San Francisco’s group report states:

“Reparation must be adequate, effective, prompt, and should be proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered.”

The report also added that members of the African American community demanded these reparations, not as a remedy for their previous enslavement, but to address the explicitly created public policies that subjugated the city's black people by expanding and upholding chattel slavery’s intent and legacy.

It was noted in the report that while neither San Francisco nor California officially endorsed the institution of chattel slavery, other cases of segregation, such as systematic repression and white supremacy found in their social codes, legal system, and extralegal affairs, were designed to exclude the black community.

The African American Reparations Advisory Committee will finalize its exhortations to the city in June. Aaron Peskin, the president of the Board of Supervisors, hopes the recommendations will be approved. He emphasized that he cannot let this report end up on a shelf, gathering dust instead of being formally implemented.

In general, California was not a slave state in history. However, cities like San Francisco have perpetuated racial discrimination, segregation, and systematic oppression for generations. The committee hopes to address this in the report.

The city’s Board of Supervisors built the committee in December 2020 during a global reckoning on racism. AARAC was assigned to comprehensively find solutions to the inequalities the city’s Black communities suffer.