San Francisco regulators to hear remediation plan Feb. 7

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The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to schedule a hearing on the city’s recently released draft plan for reparations for African Americans during their next regular meeting on Feb. 7. Hearings in a special order will be held at 15:00.

The plan was drafted by the Human Rights Commission’s Advisory Committee on African American Redress, a 15-member body tasked with making recommendations within two years.

It includes several offers of financial compensation for black residents who meet certain tenure criteria, ranging from debt relief to, most controversially, a lump sum payment of $5 million.

The draft also outlines the program’s historical rationale, including both the legacy of chattel slavery and the more modern racist practices of the San Francisco government that perpetuated black poverty, such as the “urban renewal” reconstruction policy of the latter half of the 19th century. 20th century.

Conservative groups such as the Hoover Institution have scrutinized the proposal.

“The tax implications of this proposal will turn San Francisco into a 21st-century version of Detroit, which has lost 60% of its population since 1950,” writes Hoover contributor Li Ohanian.

Chief Shamann Walton sponsored the legislation that led to the draft plan, which was passed in December 2020. He recently told San Francisco Chronicle columnist Justin Phillips that the currently suspended tax on the cannabis business could be used to fund it.

The draft plan is the result of two years of work by the Advisory Committee, including a study of other reparation schemes such as those for Holocaust survivors and Japanese American internees, and the 2019 Evanston, Illinois, black reparation program. .

Evanston’s program was the first African American reparations scheme launched by a U.S. city that provided $10 million in repayments over ten years. The first payment consists of $25,000 in grants that can be used for a down payment on housing, mortgage assistance, or home repairs.

“The United States and San Francisco have a history of causing trauma to communities of color, and that trauma continues to exist in the black community,” Walton said while presenting the law to the Oversight Rules Committee back in November 2020. “This is not the America we imagined, but this could be the San Francisco we need to right the wrongs of history.”

The final report on the plan is due in June and will include management feedback.

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