Mayor Daniel Lurie signed an ordinance establishing a privately funded reparations program — but no major donors have stepped up.
In December, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie signed an ordinance establishing a reparations fund for black residents in San Francisco — but no one seems to have any idea who will fund the program.
Lurie, who signed the ordinance after it was unanimously approved by the city’s Board of Supervisors, has stressed that no city funds will go toward the controversial initiative.
Instead, the fund is open to private donations. The mayor has said if money becomes available, the city would work to distribute it to eligible recipients.
However, no nonprofit groups or wealthy individuals appear to have come forward with plans to donate to the fund.
National Review reached out to the mayor’s office to ask if there are any groups or wealthy individuals who have expressed an interest in donating money to the fund, or if the city has any concrete idea where money for the fund will come from. Lurie’s office responded by emphasizing that the city would not be contributing — and left it at that.
“I was elected to drive San Francisco’s recovery, and that’s what I’m focused on every day. We are not allocating money to this fund — with a historic $1 billion budget deficit, we are going to spend our money on making the city safer and cleaner,” Lurie’s office told NR in response.
The mayor has shown little enthusiasm for the passage of the ordinance; it was signed into law without a public announcement, press release, or social media post, as local outlets noted.
Conservative political commentator Richie Greenberg told the local Fox affiliate that Lurie would have been better off not signing the ordinance into law, given that it could still cost taxpayers money by requiring the city to set up a new bureaucracy and defend potential legal challenges.
“When I learned that he signed this — disillusionment, disappointment,” Greenberg told the outlet. “I had hoped that he would have said, you know, this is something that we don’t need at this point.”
The reparations fund is more than four years in the making. The San Francisco Reparations Committee began meeting monthly in June 2021 and ultimately issued a 400-page report, which included a slew of recommendations, including a one-time, $5 million payment to each eligible person.
And despite the shocking sticker-price, Supervisor Shamann Walton, who led the city’s reparations movement, told NR in 2023 that a $5 million payment would not go far enough toward addressing historical injustices.
Walton said at the time that the proposed $5 million payment per qualifying person is actually “much less than a lot of the projections that people say black people should receive for reparations here in the United States.”
Asked if there is a figure that he views as more fair or appropriate, Walton responded, “Definitely not.”
In addition to reaching out to the mayor’s office, National Review contacted all eleven members of the city’s Board of Supervisors who unanimously approved the resolution to ask where the money for the fund will come from. Only Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s office responded, only to direct NR to Walton’s office.
Walton’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
National Review also reached out to the reparations committee for comment and did not receive a response.
And while the momentum for the reparations project seems to have stalled, the city has already sunk thousands of dollars into its reparations efforts, without a single dollar in reparations ever being paid out.
The 14 members of the reparations board received a monthly stipend of $250 from the time the committee began meeting in June 2021 until it held its final meeting in January 2024, as NR previously reported. The city also paid out an additional $250 to each member each time they attended the committee’s monthly meetings.
That means the city spent as much as $217,000 on the committee members’ work alone.
And the members who helped develop the controversially expensive proposals would also be eligible to receive reparations payments, should they ever be paid out, committee chairman Eric McDonnell previously confirmed to NR.
While the reparations program appears to be petering out, McDonnell is still arguing there is a need for reparations in the city.
“I would argue that the city is accountable for not just investing in this fund, but for supporting in all the ways possible the recommendations of our plan, including financial repair,” McDonnell told the local Fox affiliate. “It is a step in the right direction. It by no means demonstrates or represents a full on commitment to making something happen,” he said of the recently passed resolution.