Palm Springs Reaches Nearly $6 Million Reparations Deal With Former Section 14 Residents

The City Council is expected to vote on the settlement for residents of a neighborhood that burned more than 50 years ago. It could also consider another $21 million for community programs.

The city of Palm Springs, Calif., will consider a nearly $6 million reparations settlement 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. Up to another $21 million could go toward housing, economic development and small business programs. The City Council is expected to 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 because of discriminatory housing restrictions.