San Francisco lawmakers moved ahead Monday with a component of the city’s African American reparations plan that has been in legislative limbo due to recent fiscal crises. The Board of Supervisors Rules Committee voted unanimously to send an ordinance establishing a Reparations Fund to the full board with recommendation.
The bill, like the rest of the plan, is sponsored by District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton. Board President Rafael Mandelman and District 11 Supervisor Chayanne Chen are cosponsors. Initially introduced in 2024, it was continued last summer.
“We are now at a pivotal and critical moment for Black people here in San Francisco — a dramatically declining population, high concentrations of poverty and unemployment here in the city, coupled with disproportionate increases in the number of black people who are homeless in this city,” Walton told colleagues at the beginning of the hearing. “Now is the time we make good on some of the promises and provide critical resources needed to support reparations here in San Francisco.”
Before voting, committee members heard testimony from supporters and from members of the advisory group that worked on the plan.
Advisory committee chair Eric McDonald described the fund as “a critical mechanism to mobilize private sector philanthropic and community investment toward the implementation of the San Francisco Reparations Plan.”
“With this legislation, you have the opportunity to build a mechanism through which San Francisco can move from intention to action, from apology to repair,” McDonald added.
Former supervisor and Rev. Amos Brown told the committee that “San Francisco has the opportunity to be true to its word about being a progressive liberal city when you stand up and make sure that there’s the money for these reparations and not just a word of apology.”
The bill establishes the fund to receive monies either appropriated by the city or donated by private parties. The Human Rights Commission would administer the fund.
Supervisors accepted a draft reparations plan in 2023, produced by an advisory committee in cooperation with the Human Rights Commission, but work on it was ultimately suspended at the beginning of 2024, when then-mayor London Breed vetoed legislation to create a reparations office. The plan attracted controversy over some of its recommendations, including a “moonshot” proposal to pay a lump sum of $5 million to each qualifying Black resident.
Meanwhile, Breed moved forward with the Dream Keeper Initiative, a smaller-scale investment program in the city’s Black community. It was initially funded by monies diverted from the Police Department budget in 2020 in the wake of public outcry over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The Human Rights Commission had attempted to establish a division of labor for the two programs, with Dream Keeper providing specific project assistance, such as helping start small businesses. At the same time, the Reparations Plan would address longer-term generational equity issues.
Dream Keeper has been plagued with significant oversight issues, including some involving former Human Rights Commission director Sheryl Davis. Davis used substantial amounts of Dream Keeper funds to pay for luxury travel in support of seminars and speaking engagements outside of San Francisco. Meanwhile, Collective Impact, a nonprofit organization run by James Spingola, who, among other things, shared a home with Davis, received $7.5 million from the program. Davis failed to disclose her relationship with Spingola.
Observers have expressed concern that Reparations Plan programs could fall victim to the same sort of corruption that eventually affected Dream Keeper.