San Fran Establishes Creation of Reparations Fund, But Has No Money for It
San Francisco’s mayor has signed a city measure to create a fund that could provide each of the city’s eligible black residents with $5 million in reparations.
But where that money comes from won’t be as simple as an official signature.
The new ordinance, signed by Mayor Daniel Lurie just before Christmas, creates a reparations fund, as proposed by the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) in 2023 — a measure that would cost an estimated $50 billion.
But the measure does not allocate any money.
According to the report of Daily mail:
According to the [AARAC’s] According to the 2023 report, every eligible African American adult in San Francisco should receive a lump sum of $5 million to “compensate the affected population for the decades of harm they have suffered.” About 50,000 black people live in San Francisco, and eligibility remains unclear.
Although this effort garnered the most attention – and sparked the most controversy – AARAC issued more than 100 suggestions, including debt relief, a guaranteed annual income of $97,000, debt forgiveness, and city-funded housing for blacks.
In 2023, the libertarian Cato Institute called the plan “pure madness,” noting that even the proposal’s authors acknowledged that “San Francisco was never a hub of the African slave trade.”
The conservative think tank Hoover Institution also weighed in that year, saying the plan would cost each non-African American household in the city about $600,000 in taxes.
However, Mayor Lurie told the Daily Mail taxpayers were safe, saying the city was struggling financially and expected a billion-dollar budget deficit for 2026.
“Given these historic fiscal challenges, the city does not have resources to allocate to this fund,” he told the Mail.
He gave the impression that signing the bill was more of a symbolic gesture than one based in economic reality, telling the Email:
For several years, communities across the city have worked with the government to recognize the decades of harm done to San Francisco’s Black community. Although this process largely predates my administration, I am signing legislation to create this fund in recognition of the work of so many San Franciscans and the unanimous support of the Board of Supervisors.
Lurie said the city is open to “outside donors” and “we are prepared to ensure that funding reaches those who are eligible.”
However, with a seemingly unattainable price tag of billions, the measure appears to have established that the city of San Francisco now officially practices virtue signaling.
Even the San Francisco chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has publicly opposed the city’s management of the Reparations Fund.
The Rev. Amos Brown, president of the NAACP chapter, repeatedly said in public appearances in 2023 that the reparations plan gave “false hope” to Black residents.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times bestseller House of secrets and nine other mystery novels and non-fiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com to find out more.
