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

[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.

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

[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...

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.