The City Council will vote on a package for former Black and Latino residents of a neighborhood that burned more than 50 years ago.
The city of Palm Springs, Calif., will consider a nearly $27 million reparations package for former residents of a neighborhood of mostly Black and Latino families that was destroyed more than a half-century ago.
Former residents of Section 14 — which was razed in the 1960s to make room for commercial development — accepted the city’s final cash offer of $5.9 million. The larger package includes housing and economic development programs worth up to another $21 million. The City Council will vote on the settlement offer and the initiatives at a public meeting on Thursday.
“We have been fighting for a long time to tell our story,” said Margarita Genera, 86, who lived with her parents and two siblings in the neighborhood.
If the settlement is approved, Palm Springs, a desert resort destination, would become one of a few municipalities in the country to have successfully reached a deal on reparations. Evanston, Ill., in 2021 became the first city to offer reparations in the form of housing grants, though the program is currently being challenged in a lawsuit. Some cities, like New York City and Tulsa, Okla., have recently created commissions to study and develop plans for a reparations program.
African Americans, along with Mexicans, built and rented homes on leased land in Section 14, a one-square-mile tract near downtown Palm Springs owned by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. It was one of the few places minorities could live in because of discriminatory housing restrictions.