San Francisco Passes a First-of-its-Kind Tax on Big Businesses To Help the Homeless (recode.net)

San Francisco voters passed a measure that has divided the tech community and sparked a national debate about the industry's responsibility to fix the city's homelessness crisis. From a report: The San Francisco Chronicle called the race at 60 percent in favor with 99 percent of the vote counted. Proposition C will raise the city's gross receipts tax by an average of .5 percent on annual gross receipts over $50 million that companies like Square, Lyft and Salesforce generate. The new funds will bring in an estimated $250 million to $300 million a year -- twice what the city currently spends on an annual basis to help the homeless in tech's de facto capital. The thousands of people living on San Francisco's streets serve as a daily reminder of economic inequality in a city that has one of the highest concentrations of billionaires in the nation. Earlier this year, a United Nations expert on housing called the living conditions of the homeless in the Bay Area "cruel" and "unacceptable." The decision to increase funding for the city's most needy is a victory for the local nonprofits behind the measure and their tech fairy godfather, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who, along with his company, has poured more than $7 million into the campaign in the month leading up to the election.

Comments

Take care of the homeless

[lgw]

Do a great job taking care of the homeless and your city will become a magnet for the homeless of the nation. If that's what you want, go for it. Cheaper to turn them all into Soylent Green, but, hey, democracy, and each city can have its own values.

Frankly, this is less odd and government-intrusive than most stuff SF does, and companies of course have the option of just excluding SF from their business if it's not worth the cost.

Re:Take care of the homeless

[SirSlud]

Cheaper to turn them all into Soylent Green

Just to be clear, you're saying the preferable thing would be to kill people because the act of killing them is cheaper than anything else, and cost is the most important measure on which you'd base your actions?

Re:Take care of the homeless

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to be clear, you're saying the preferable thing would be to kill people because the act of killing them is cheaper than anything else, and cost is the most important measure on which you'd base your actions?

Yeah, Charles Dickens captured this best ...

'Are there no prisons?'

'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.'And the Union workhouses.' demanded Scrooge. 'Are they still in operation?'

'Both very busy, sir.'

'Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 'I'm very glad to hear it.'

'Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,' returned the gentleman, 'a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?'

'Nothing!' Scrooge replied.

'You wish to be anonymous?'

'I wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. 'Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned-they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.'

'Many can't go there; and many would rather die.'

'If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.'

Pretty much the attitude is "I'm rich, you're not, if you can't make yourself rich it's best that you die".

It's the completely selfish asshole outlook on life, and the kind of thing that makes you hope those who believe that fall into hard times and learn what that actually means.

If you're wishing people would die off and reduce the surplus population, then you deserve to become one of those.

Scarily enough, this sentiment is repeated by people who call themselves Christians.

Re:Take care of the homeless

[HornWumpus]

The ACLU was on point. People like to blame Reagan, but he closed empty loonie bins after the ACLU got the nuts released.

There is a long history of police states putting dissidents in loonie bins.

I suggest making it easier for family to put loonies away. Absent family, make the government first put a trustee in charge of the loonies checks, then make that medical professional (with a legal responsibility to care for the nut) ask for the commitment.

Re:HAHAH

[drinkypoo]

More corporate flight from California. Good.

It is good. These large employers do harm just by being large. It doesn't matter if we tax them to make them pay their fair share, or if they go somewhere else and become a problem somewhere else. They will be replaced rapidly enough, and they will not be missed. We have the talent.

California is one of the most expensive states

[rsilvergun]

in the Union. Always has been. Not because of taxes, but because people want to live there. The weather's fantastic. They get little or no natural disasters (occasional fire or mud slide, nothing like east coast gets). Great beaches. Lots of parks. And you've got tons and tons of amenities (great sports teams, Disney Land, fantastic schools, etc, etc).

We've had 40 years of offshoring and outsourcing. If the companies could leave they would have done so already. It's high time we Americans called their bluff. Wanna leave? Fine. Go. Door's right there. Don't let it hit you where the dog shoulda bit you. You can go home, but you can't take the ball. If you try, we'll eminent domain your ass. This is our country, and we're through letting you threaten us.

I should add

[rsilvergun]

why aren't people more angry at the constant threat of total economic devastation from mega corporations? When the Mafia did this shit we called in Eliot Ness and sorted their sorry asses out....

Where is this money even going??

[SuperKendall]

It seems like after this new tax, California may be well in excess of spending $100k/homeless person per year. At what point does it make more sense to buy them all housing in one other state and pay for meals and everything in perpetuity?

From what I've seen though homeless people in California get pretty much nothing from all this money supposedly devoted to them. I'll bet if you looked over the people administering these programs you would find SO MUCH corruption...

Socialism is like a mousetrap ....

[King_TJ]

It works because the mouse isn't aware why the cheese is free.

Uber-liberal San Francisco will continue to destroy itself as long as it embraces these "rob from the rich and give to the poor" policies. But perhaps it's necessary to let some of our cities follow these flawed ideas through, in the hopes that it educates more people?

Again, though it falls on deaf ears with the people who aren't already in agreement .... A vast majority of the homeless will not better their situations, even if large amounts of money are spent on giving them free things. Many have mental illnesses and simply aren't capable of functioning as contributing members of society. Occasionally, they even HAVE money but are living on the streets anyway, because that money is tied up in some sort of trust, set up for them by family members who knew they had issues. They're not in a frame of mind to withdraw that money and use it constructively on things like renting an apartment.....

America has some real challenges dealing with mental health, but I'm not sure the science is even at a stage where we can provide many solutions? You can give a lot of these people treatment, but serious mental problems don't get cured by any of the drugs out there. At best, some drug combinations work temporarily for a person, until their effectiveness decreases over the years. And it's a crap shoot if a new drug cocktail can be prescribed that gets them back to a functional state again for X number of additional years.

Once upon a time, we just locked them all away in asylums so the public didn't have to see or interact with them. Now, we don't - so you see them sleeping in the streets. It is what it is, but I don't want to punish businesses for any of it.

From A Bay Area Slashdotter - Soon Homeless

[BrendaEM]

In the SF Bay area, the cost of homes are artificially high because the properties have changed hands so many times in the last decade--each time the price goes up from the agent and the banker. Now, we have large investment firms flipping houses, also driving up the costs. Here, we aren't making communities, we are making a collection of houses that few people own, which is exactly what the banks want.

On my street in Campbell, I've seen the same houses go $750,000 to over a $1,000,000 in less than 5 years. Even with two tech workers, it's not easy to pay that off.

The thing you won't be able to understand: a lot of the homeless in the SF Bay area, are blue-collar working people. People work to maintain the cities they often cannot afford to live in. This is also what happened in Orange County. The people who clean Irvine and Tustin Ranch live in Costa Mesa. What is also being built here seems a little like the old Science Fiction movie Metropolis.

Most of the traffic problems here are caused by single drivers going to work from where they can afford to work where they cannot afford to live.

There is also an attitude here that people don't believe how rich they are, which is caused by the high property. If you make $40,000 year, you might not be able to afford a 2-bedroom apartment here.

There are a few simple solutions:
1.) If you buy a house, you must keep it and live in for 5 years--unless you get divorced or show bankruptcy. This makes property homes and communities and not investment tokens.
2.) Zone more areas for apartments.
3.) Stop outlawing poverty and homelessness. Homelessness is an equal-opportunity affliction. This means no more police harassment.
4.) Give people a place to shower and go to the bathroom. It's not only the homeless people who need to use bathrooms. Pregnant women and men with prostate problems have to go more, too.
6.) Let people sleep in their cars.
7.) Make sure that homeless people can vote.
8.) Make social workers live as homeless people for 1 month before giving them jobs--on the lowest benefit afforded to the homeless people.
9.) Build small pod-hotels for the homeless people, like they have in Japan.
10.) Offer wash-machines for homeless people. If people can was their clothes, then they don't need to carry as much with them.
11.) Require that the "Salvation Army" either give homeless people clothes--or give up their non-profit status.
12.) Give more money to help the homeless, and get that money from reduced administration. It takes a lot of money in administration costs to deny people help.
13.) Consider giving 1/4th of the tax money to help a homeless person that might otherwise be spent to keep someone in jail.
14.) Give homeless people carts and storage solutions but expect them to organize their stuff. Riding along the Los Gatos Creek trail, I've seen homeless camps that where a shambles, but I also saw a well organized one, with signs of cottage industry.
15.) Few if any social programs have any kind of meaningful feedback. All social interviews should have a program in social worker performance review sheet. Are the programs working? Was the interviewer fair?

The problems surrounding homelessness won't get fixed unless the people involved run. As far as I know, the only politician around here gives a damn about the homeless--was himself homeless as a child when his families home burned down.