San Francisco board of supervisors leans toward giving every eligible black adult $5 million in reparations

A proposal to pay black San Franciscans $5 million each in reparations has reached the city’s Board of Supervisors.

The $5 million per person proposal is just one of over 100 recommendations made by the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee in their draft report released in December, according to the Associated Press.

Other proposals include guaranteed annual incomes of $97,000 per qualifying resident and homes in San Francisco purchased for just $1 per family, the BBC reports.

The Board of Supervisors reported voiced enthusiastic support for the proposed reparations plans during Tuesday’s meeting.

"Those of my constituents who lost their minds about this proposal, it’s not something we’re doing or we would do for other people. It’s something we would do for our future, for everybody’s collective future," said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman,

The Board of Supervisors can approve all, some, or none of the recommendations, and have the power to change them. A final committee report will be delivered to the state legislature on July 1, where lawmakers will then decide whether to draft and pass legislation.

According to the Associated Press, an estimate from Stanford University’s Hoover Institute revealed that the draft reparations plan could cost non-black families in the city at least $600,000 each.

Opponents of the proposal say that the city can’t afford major reparations payments at the moment due to a deep budget deficit.

"This conversation we’re having in San Francisco is completely unserious. They just threw a number up, there’s no analysis," said John Dennis, chair of the San Francisco Republican Party, who said he is open to serious discussions on the subject, but doesn’t consider the $5 million proposal to be one. "It seems ridiculous, and it also seems that this is the one city where it could possibly pass."

Earlier this month, the committee made the decision to limit reparations to the descendants of black people who were in the United States in the 19th century.