California Reparations Task Force Estimates State Should Pay Each Eligible Person $223K For ‘Housing Discrimination’
Gavin Newsom’s nine-man reparations task force is estimating the state should pay each eligible person $223,200 for housing discrimination in the form of housing grants, tuition, or direct cash payments.
Reparations Task Force member Kamilah V. Moore said on social media: “A nine-member Reparations Task Force has spent months traveling across California to learn about the generational effects of racist policies and actions.
“The group, formed by legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020, is scheduled to release a report to lawmakers in Sacramento to next year outlining recommendations for state-level reparations.
“In a preliminary report this year, the task force outlined how enslaved Black people were forced to California during the Gold Rush era.
“Californians eligible for reparations, the task force decided in March, would be descendants of enslaved African Americans or of a “free Black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century.
“The task force has identified five areas — housing discrimination, mass incarceration, unjust property seizures, devaluation of Black businesses and health care — in discussions for compensation.”
“For example, from 1933 to 1977, when it comes to housing discrimination, the task force estimates compensation of around $569 billion, with $223,200 per person.
“Final figures will be released in the report next year [June 2024].
“A blight law from 1945, the task force’s interim report explains, paved the way for officials to use eminent domain to destroy Black communities, including shuttering more than 800 businesses and displacing 4,700 households in San Francisco beginning in the 1950s.”
After work on Interstate 210 began later that decade, the report goes on, the freeway was eventually built in the path of a Black business district in Pasadena, where city officials offered residents $75k— less than the minimum cost to buy a new home in the city— for their old home.
“Gloria Moore grew up in Russell City, Calif., an unincorporated parcel near San Francisco Bay that was bulldozed in the 1960s through eminent domain.
“After their home was taken for about $2,200, the family members struggled to regain the financial stability and community…”
“The California Reparations Task Force meets again, in two weeks! Join us in person, on Wed. and Thurs. Dec. 14-15 at @Oakland City Hall from 9am-5pm PT.
Meeting topics: 1) residency requirements 2) final proposals 3) local reparations.”
According to The New York Times:
Underscoring the political hurdles, opinions on reparations are sharply divided by race. Last year, an online survey by the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that 86 percent of African Americans supported compensating the descendants of slaves, compared with 28 percent of white people. Other polls have also shown wide splits.
Still, several efforts have gotten off the ground recently.
In 2021, officials in Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb, approved $10 million in reparations in the form of housing grants.
Three months later, officials in Asheville, N.C., committed $2.1 million to reparations. And over the summer, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a plan to transfer ownership of Bruce’s Beach — a parcel in Manhattan Beach that was seized with scant compensation from a Black couple in 1924 — to the couple’s great-grandsons and great-great-grandsons.
“We want to see the land and economic wealth stolen from Black families all across this country returned,” said Kavon Ward, an activist who advocated on behalf of the Bruces’ descendants and has since started a group, Where Is My Land, that seeks to help Black Americans secure restitution.“We are in a moment that we cannot let pass.”
A so-called blight law from 1945, the task force’s interim report explains, paved the way for officials to use eminent domain to destroy Black communities, including shuttering more than 800 businesses and displacing 4,700 households in San Francisco’s Western Addition beginning in the 1950s.
After work on Interstate 210 began later that decade, the report goes on, the freeway was eventually built in the path of a Black business district in Pasadena, where city officials offered residents $75,000 — less than the minimum cost to buy a new home in the city — for their old homes.
2. “The group, formed by legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020, is scheduled to release a report to lawmakers in Sacramento to next year outlining recommendations for state-level reparations.” #AB3121 #CRTF #ReparationsNow pic.twitter.com/bux0R5RDp8
— Kamilah V. Moore, Esq. (@KamilahVMoore) December 1, 2022