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How San Francisco quietly continued a ‘reparations’ program marred by mismanagement

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has revived a controversial benefit program once lauded as a step toward “reparations” for black San Franciscans.

Known as the Dream Keeper Initiative, the relaunched program will grant $36 million to “community-serving organizations,” including some that have offered “Afri-centric” mental-health services, African ancestry DNA testing, and free doulas for “African American birthing people.”

The Dream Keeper Initiative was founded by former San Francisco Mayor London Breed in 2021, fulfilling her promise to redirect police funding to “the African American community” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In February 2021, Breed announced that the city would divert $120 million from its law-enforcement budgets to fund the program, which would in turn funnel the money to a web of left-wing nonprofits. The Board of Supervisors president hailed the initiative as the “first step towards true reparations for the Black community here in San Francisco.” 

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Despite its lofty ambitions, Dream Keeper was troubled from the outset.

San Francisco poured $60 million per year into the program with little apparent oversight or quality control. Nonprofits took advantage, reportedly spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on black-tie galas and salary increases. Other funding reportedly disappeared into a web of shell companies, raising fraud concerns.

Daniel Lurie, the Levi Strauss fortune heir who campaigned for mayor against Breed in 2024, criticized his opponent for the fiasco.

“London Breed handed a blank check to her closest allies with zero oversight,” he said at the time. “Hundreds of millions of dollars were mismanaged that could have been spent to solve the city’s safety, drug, and economic recovery crisis. . . . As your mayor, I will bring a new era of proven, accountable leadership to City Hall.”

Under pressure, Breed said she was “appalled” by the reports of misuse and froze all Dream Keeper funding. But the damage was done: Breed found herself ensnared by the perception of corruption, and Lurie won the election. 

Instead of abandoning Breed’s scandal-ridden program, however, Lurie seems eager to revive it.

In March 2025, the new mayor quietly relaunched the Dream Keeper program as part of the new “RFP [request for proposals] 100” initiative, and approved $36 million to, among other things, “advanc[e] equity.”

The Lurie administration’s list of RFP 100 recipients, published last month, shows that the city is still committed to identity politics, with payouts for a “culturally affirming wellness” initiative, programming “rooted in a Black feminist healing framework,” and other unconventional social-welfare initiatives.

For example, the Lurie administration awarded $600,000 to SisterWeb, which gives free doula care to pregnant “Black women and birthing people”; $250,000 to Because Black Is Still Beautiful, which has offered massage therapy and African ancestry DNA testing to formerly incarcerated black women and a trans-identifying man; and $400,000 to Queer Women of Color Media Arts, which previously used Dream Keeper funds to support “queer and transgender Black filmmakers,” including one who followed two “black transmen . . . through their first pregnancies.”

Lurie’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Though the Lurie administration has been careful to create the appearance of a legally compliant program, promising that it would “not consider any demographic data about the racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, or national orientation makeup” of applicants’ staff, leadership, and boards, the RFP 100 is arguably a form of soft reparations.

The city’s Human Rights Commission, which administers RFP 100, released its funding guidelines for the program in 2025. The guidelines state that the city will assess applicants’ “commitment to cultural responsiveness, inclusivity, and equity” and—while they require grantees to “serve eligible participants regardless of race . . . or other characteristics”—they also command grantees to “ensure that outreach efforts include . . . the Black community.” (In a statement, HRC claimed that “Nonprofits which enter into grant agreements with the City to provide services are required to ensure services are open and available to all.”)

The grantees’ racial commitments are even more explicit. To qualify for SisterWeb’s doula services, an individual must “identify as Black/African American.” (Below the list of requirements, the group claims that “No one is turned away on the basis of race or ethnicity”; SisterWeb did not respond to our request for clarification.)

The Trump administration might take note.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon has been aggressively dismantling racially discriminatory programs. As a former San Francisco resident, she’ll be intimately familiar with the euphemisms and shell games. 

If Dhillon’s office decides to take action, Mayor Lurie might have more problems than wasting public funds on doulas and drag queens: he could find himself in court for violating the Civil Rights Act.

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’s Cultural Revolution. Haley Strack is an investigative reporter at City Journal.

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