Since grade school, Bayview Hunters Point native Victoria Bolds has excelled. Last year, her academic prowess propelled her from San Francisco’s George Washington High School to Sacramento State University through a scholarship. Then, in January, while walking to a gym to train as a Division 1 track runner, she was struck by a truck.
Having to abandon her sport, Bolds felt isolated. She wanted to go home for good. That’s when her coach from the Get Through College program stepped in to help. “You’re more than just an athlete,” he told her. She stayed at Sacramento State.
“He definitely talked me out of a very dark hole,” Bolds said.
Such programs are struggling in San Francisco. Black-led initiatives say they are laying off employees, or ending stipends, fearing their future grants will come up empty.
After allegations of misspending rocked the Dream Keeper Initiative, a city-run program supporting the Black community, Mayor London Breed froze new grant awards, throwing organizations and individuals who benefited from the funds into financial uncertainty. Among them are 34 organizations that had been promised money from the Human Rights Commission, which oversees the Dream Keeper Initiative, only to see their combined $12 million in grants locked down.
‘I’m losing sleep over getting this money out’
Since it launched in 2021, the Dream Keeper Initiative has funded a wide range of programs designed to support San Francisco’s historically underserved Black residents: entrepreneur training, grocery vouchers, down-payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, and more. City leaders have budgeted nearly $300 million for the program, about $140 million of which has been spent, according to the controller’s office.
The Dream Keeper Initiative was a boon for Black leaders, who have criticized the city for overlooking Black-run organizations that lack the resources or experience to obtain city grants.
“The balancing of the scales allowed for a lot of Black programs in San Francisco to be able to get to the starting blocks. They could even enter the race,” Geoffrey Grier, director of SF Recovery Theatre, said of Dream Keeper. “Prior, you couldn’t even fill out the registration form.”
After The Standard and the San Francisco Chronicle uncovered evidence of misspending and financial mismanagement at the initiative, Sheryl Davis — former head of the Human Rights Commission and a key decision-maker at Dream Keeper — resigned, and the city paused new grants pending a review by budget officials. Dream Keeper recipients amid multi-year contracts have continued to receive payments, according to the mayor’s office. But some fear that won’t last.
The uncertainty is rippling through the Black community.
In addition to counseling from Get Through College, Bolds receives stipends to help with bills. After those stipends began to dry up, she took on all the extra work she could find — as a valet, at the student union, and at the student game room — often working from 11 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. before attending classes.
She is frustrated that her academics might suffer.
“What you work so hard for is being jeopardized for something that you have nothing to do with,” Bolds said.
At Hamilton Recreation Center on Wednesday, Mawuli Tugbenyoh, acting director of the Human Rights Commission, faced harsh questioning from the Black community. Grier was one of them. His organization, the SF Recovery Theatre, was among dozens of Dream Keeper recipients. Now his annual Black History Month celebration at the San Francisco Jazz Center is at risk, he said.
“All of a sudden they pull the chair out from under you,” Grier told The Standard. “At what point do we say this portion of the funds is not under investigation and we can release it?”
The palpable frustration over Dream Keeper Initiative funding bubbled over Thursday before members of the Board of Supervisors’ Government Audit and Oversight Committee. In front of an audience of Black community members in the City Hall chambers, Supervisor Dean Preston pushed Tugbenyoh to communicate a timeline as to when the funding would be released.
“It feels like there’s a lack of urgency on that,” Preston said. “People are literally going to lay off staff, or have, because they don’t have these funds.”
Tugbenyoh shot back, “I know it’s very unsatisfying for me to stand here and say there’s not a timeline,” adding, “I’m losing sleep over getting this money out.”
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin invited Breed and Davis to attend the hearing to hear community concerns. Davis’ attorney did not respond to Peskin’s request, the board president said. Breed declined to attend through a public letter written by her chief of staff, Sean Elsbernd.
Students paying the price
Staff from programs funded by the Dream Keeper Initiative have publicly said their community may be paying for the misdeeds of city leaders. The investigation into Dream Keeper involves a handful of city actors and nonprofits, they say, but the funding could impact hundreds, with consequences for real people, right now.
Tachelle Herron is a San Francisco native who grew up in Bayview Hunters Point. She brings her community experience to her role as an executive director of Ain’t I a Scholar and a consultant for 100% College Prep, which administers the mentorship program that helped Bolds stay in school.
“Becoming an educator in my own community was to stop and prevent the pipeline to prison,” she said. “I couldn’t take that. I couldn’t bear the news that my students are in juvenile [detention] or my students are dead.”
The program has already reduced the number of students it helps to 90 from 120 last year, Herron said.
One of her mentees, Jermaine Fulgham, said he works two jobs just to keep afloat while attending San Francisco State University, where he studies criminal science. Fulgham said seeing his stipend shrink, and potentially losing it, means he has to take on more paid work instead of studying.
“With it being cut, not once but twice, basically, we really [are] not going to have much to work with,” he said. “Now we’re going to really take the energy we put into our academic careers and work.”
Herron said her students have already seen $1,000 monthly stipends reduced to $500, awarded if they attend workshops and stay on track. If they lose Dream Keeper funding, as they fear, the students might also lose mentorship, she said.
Former Gateway High School student Thailyah Miller said 100% College Prep helped her apply for a scholarship to San Jose State University. Her newfound network of Black scholars pushed her to succeed.
“I went to a school where there weren’t that many Black youth who really wanted to go to college,” she said. “Meeting other students that look like me, who really want to go to college — it really helped me build a community.”
Miller called Herron “my guardian angel.”
Without Dream Keeper Initiative funds, there may be fewer guardian angels watching out for San Francisco’s Black community.
SF Standard reporter Gabriel Greschler contributed to this report.