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

HAHAH

[sproketboy]

More corporate flight from California. Good.

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.

Re:HAHAH

[Oswald McWeany]

In reality, it will probably have the opposite effect.

Tackling homelessness and taking homeless people off the street improves location desirability, which increases people's desire to live and work there. Besides do you really want the mega corporations and America's financial engine to leave California?

If they go to your red state they will bring urbanization with them. Urban areas tend to lean to the left and rural areas to the right. If large corporations left California, they would take leftist ideas with them. Your red state might turn blue.

Re:HAHAH

[ShanghaiBill]

Tackling homelessness and taking homeless people off the street improves location desirability, which increases people's desire to live and work there.

You are assuming that the new spending will actually be effective. That may or may not be true. Homelessness is a difficult problem to solve, and SF already has plenty of shelters and programs that don't work. More spending on homelessness will also pull more homeless people from other areas of the country, which may actually make the problem worse on the streets of San Francisco.

Re:HAHAH

[whoever57]

More corporate flight from California. Good.

You know that at least one big business CEO was promoting this, right? Or don't you care about facts?

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

[PackMan97]

Yup, next time I see someone homeless in my area, instead of giving them $5. I'll take them to the bus station and buy them a ticket to San Fran.

Re:Take care of the homeless

[alvinrod]

That's what we used to have, but there was a huge moral panic about the deplorable conditions in those facilities and public outcry lead to them being shut down. There's just no getting around the fact that people with severe mental health issues aren't going to behave like well adjusted human beings, but from a pure cost to society perspective, it's probably much cheaper to house them in sanatoriums than it is to run around putting out the small fires that arise when you leave them to wander the streets.

These are humans

[Anonymous Coward]

The way you treat others speaks a lot about yourself. These are people... so many people are just a few missed paychecks away from being homeless. Stop treating them like a scourge or like animals.

Where I live they go so far as to put concrete "spikes" to make flat areas unusable by the homeless.

This all starts from the "every zygote is sacred" mentality -- when you prevent abortion, someone has to pay for all the costs of supporting the resulting child. The more children, the more jobs are needed. That pushes more people to the bottom wages and increases living costs as more have to share.

These decisions are causing future problems -- and guess what? The future is now. It has been for many years.

When people have true control over their reproductive rights, fewer children are brought into society and those competitive costs decrease... which means fewer homeless people.

Anon because some religious cultists have attacked clinics and doctors in the past for simply helping people. Don't get me started on the fuckery that is religion and it's incredibly harmful effects on society.

Re: Migration

[reanjr]

Funny how homeless people don't take you up on that. It's almost like being homeless is shitty no matter where you go...

Re:why don't just give money to the people

[DontBeAMoran]

It's all right there in the summary:

1. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, along with his company, has poured more than $7 million into the campaign.

2. The new funds will bring in an estimated $250 million to $300 million a year.

So, a bit over 7 million was spent once to generate 250 to 300 million every year from now on. And even if it's repealed next year, it's a net gain of over 240 million for the homeless until then. The only way it would have been bad is if the law didn't pass, but it was a calculated move on his part. What you can do for the homeless with seven million is nothing compared to 250+ million.

Re:There you go again...

[DontBeAMoran]

...economic equality... means no one prospers, because everyone is equally poor and dependent on the state for every aspect of their life. It's called Socialism.

How does "economic equality" translates to "everyone is poor"? That's a typical U.S.A. point of view.

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.

Re:California is one of the most expensive states

[sycodon]

You forgot Earthquakes.

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.

some homeless are veterans and we need to do bette

[Joe_Dragon]

some homeless are veterans and we need to do better for them.