While most Americans were focused on Christmas shopping, family dinners, and pretending San Francisco is not a cautionary tale, City Hall quietly pulled off one of its slickest moves yet. Just days before the holiday, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie signed off on a reparations ordinance that lays the groundwork for potentially handing eligible Black residents up to $5 million each. And he did it with barely a whisper.
The legislation, approved two days before Christmas, does not actually cut any checks yet. That is the trick. Instead, it authorizes the creation of a city sanctioned reparations fund, giving future leaders the structure they need to start funneling money whenever political conditions allow. No dollar amount today, no immediate backlash tomorrow, just a ticking time bomb waiting for the next budget cycle or a friendly donor.
The ordinance stems from recommendations made by San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee in a 2023 report. That report proposed a truly jaw dropping idea, a $5 million lump sum payment to every eligible African American adult in the city to compensate for “decades of harm.” Roughly 50,000 Black residents live in San Francisco, and eligibility standards remain conveniently vague.
That $5 million figure is not even the most extreme part. The committee also floated debt forgiveness, city funded housing, and a guaranteed annual income of $97,000. Yes, guaranteed. In a city already bleeding residents, businesses, and tax revenue, this was somehow treated as a serious policy proposal.
The conservative Hoover Institution warned in 2023 that implementing the plan would effectively dump about $600,000 in taxes on every non African American household in San Francisco. Mayor Lurie dismissed that estimate, citing the city’s brutal financial reality, including a projected $1 billion budget deficit next year.
To his credit, Lurie openly admitted the city cannot afford this. “The city does not have resources to allocate to this fund,” he said. But then came the escape hatch. His administration is more than happy to accept private funding if it can be “legally dedicated” to the reparations fund. Translation, if wealthy donors or activist organizations want to bankroll this experiment, City Hall will happily play middleman.
The timing is what really set critics off. Signing such a controversial measure right before Christmas, with minimal public attention, looks less like transparency and more like political sleight of hand. This was not some emergency fix for crime, homelessness, or the drug crisis. This was ideology, slipped through while residents were distracted.
San Francisco officials insist this is just about acknowledging past harm. But residents are rightly asking why a city drowning in deficits, disorder, and dysfunction is laying the groundwork for policies that could bankrupt it entirely.
The checks may not be written today. But the structure is now in place. And once government builds a mechanism like this, history suggests it does not stay empty for long.
I would not pay one red cent for reparations. My family came from Sweden in the 1890’s and never owned slaves. Fuck these mayors of communism. San Francisco or New York. You xoul=dn’t pay me enough to move back to that shit hole.
I meant couldn’t.
Reparations in a state that never had slavery? As a Caucasian man living in San Fransisco, I would have standing in a class action lawsuit against the State Of California for discrimination against all citizens who are not Black.