SF Prop. C homeless tax — measure to raise $300 million a year wins with 60%

[Pedestrian]

It will charge corporations with revenue above $50 million about 0.5 percent in gross receipts tax, with the proceeds going entirely toward homeless programs. Budget analysts estimate it will raise between $250 million and $300 million a year — nearly doubling the amount already being spent on homeless services and housing.

Billionaire Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, who poured at least $7 million of his own and his company’s money into the campaign for Prop. C, proclaimed he was “delighted the voters agree that this was what the city so badly needed.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics...0-13369555.php

San Francisco reportedly has between 7000 and 8000 homeless persons living, using needles, urinating and defecating on its streets. Prior to Prop. C, it spent about $365 million annually on programs for them (source: https://www.potreroview.net/with-a-1...-than-seattle/ ): That's over $45,000 per homeless person.

Now it will spend around $83,000 annually on each homeless person. Does anybody seriously think anything will change because of the additional funds alone? Apparently Mark Benioff does. I don't. I think it will take a stick along with all the expensive carrots. I think some people will simply need to be told you can't camp on the sidewalk, it isn't legal to pull down your pants and eliminate bodily waste on a main street in full daylight nor to sit on a busy sidewalk with a needle in your arm, then throw the needle in the gutter. And I doubt San Francisco will do any of those things.

What it will do is pay an even larger army of professional "nonprofit" homeless advocates and workers making a living providing dubious services.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Its just more money to be grafted and spent on BS. I doubt anything changes. As long as the ACLU keeps on suing LA and SF for enforcing anything, nothing will change. We need DA's and mayors with balls to fight and take the ACLU to the supreme court

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

Its just more money to be grafted and spent on BS. I doubt anything changes. As long as the ACLU keeps on suing LA and SF for enforcing anything, nothing will change. We need DA's and mayors with balls to fight and take the ACLU to the supreme court

Most likely.

It's like Prop 6. I voted yes to repeal it because that gas tax + vehicle fee money that steals $700+ per year per driver, is not mandated to fix any infrastructure.

It goes into the general fund which then ends up in the pockets of government workers and their pensions, especially in the downturn years that are coming.

[CherryCreek]

Pretty big wad of change, we will see it makes a difference. There's always the risk that a well-meaning homeless programs will help attract homeless from other areas and that SF will soon find itself overwhelmed be ever greater numbers.

[jtown,man]

So now its even more expensive to set up a headquarters or large business in San Francisco?

I love that these places literally shot themselves...no one needs to harm their economies, they do it themselves.

San Antonio raised taxes by a tiny amount, like this, a few years ago, but it was to fund universal daycare(or something along those lines). A worthy program. Get kids educated earlier and give parents breathing room to work.

This helps all the transient people who immigrate to SF for the weather and programs. yay.

And the best part? The people voted for this, so they can't complain.

[urbanadvocate]

SF leadership is too homogenous as are the way people think there. This is not going to do anything to solve the issue. With a downturn economy expect it to be even worse. There isn't an emoji with a dramatic enough eye roll for this.

SF went from one of my favorite cities in the 90s and early 2000s to a city that really annoys me.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

I love that these places literally shot themselves...no one needs to harm their economies, they do it themselves.

Except the Bay Area has arguably the most successful regional economy on the planet. It has the highest median income by CSA in the richest country on earth.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by urbanadvocate

SF leadership is too homogenous as are the way people think there. This is not going to do anything to solve the issue. With a downturn economy expect it to be even worse. There isn't an emoji with a dramatic enough eye roll for this.

SF went from one of my favorite cities in the 90s and early 2000s to a city that really annoys me.

I might generally agree with you, but in this particular case there was plenty of disagreement. Both the recently elected and popular Mayor Breed and at least one tech titan, Twitter/Square's Jack Dorsey, opposed the measure. But no one put the money into the opposition campaign to match Benioff's "pro" spending. And, of course, the typical San Franciscan sees him/her-self and the city as specializing in "compassion" while being wary of "big business" so there was a built-in proclivity to support something like this.

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Except the Bay Area has arguably the most successful regional economy on the planet. It has the highest median income by CSA in the richest country on earth.

Right, and we can say that they’re so incredibly successful despite myriad policies that hurt their economic performance, namely extreme land use regulation that hinders growth (obviously the character and preservation of natural amenities also helps attract talent, but by any reasonable measure they’ve gone too far).

I wonder if it’s something like the resource curse. Living in a time of plenty encourages wasteful policies that will only become obvious when the lean times come. There’s a similar argument that the housing bubble of the aughts masked weaknesses in manufacturing and the labor market for low-skill workers that only came into sharp relief after the recession.

[urbanadvocate]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I might generally agree with you, but in this particular case there was plenty of disagreement. Both the recently elected and popular Mayor Breed and at least one tech titan, Twitter/Square's Jack Dorsey, opposed the measure. But no one put the money into the opposition campaign to match Benioff's "pro" spending. And, of course, the typical San Franciscan sees him/her-self and the city as specializing in "compassion" while being wary of "big business" so there was a built-in proclivity to support something like this.

Yea well said! Agree with you.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

Most likely.

It's like Prop 6. I voted yes to repeal it because that gas tax + vehicle fee money that steals $700+ per year per driver, is not mandated to fix any infrastructure.

It goes into the general fund which then ends up in the pockets of government workers and their pensions, especially in the downturn years that are coming.

Not according to this: https://rebuildsocal.org/prop-6-myths-and-facts/

I voted against its repeal.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I voted against its repeal.

Me too, but then I buy maybe 35 gallons of gas in CA per year so it costs me very little. Still, I think we need all the money we can get to fix the state's infrastructure and gas taxes are a fair way to pay for a lot of it since a lot of it is roads and bridges that benefit drivers (though they also benefit everybody because our food and everything else is mostly delivered by trucks using those roads and bridges).

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics...0-13369555.php

San Francisco reportedly has between 7000 and 8000 homeless persons living, using needles, urinating and defecating on its streets. Prior to Prop. C, it spent about $365 million annually on programs for them (source: https://www.potreroview.net/with-a-1...-than-seattle/ ): That's over $45,000 per homeless person.

This will not solve the problem, the issue with homelessness isnt that there is no help, or charity or services available, the problem is many court cases, laws and policies were enacted in the 1980's that prevented involuntary commissions into mental hospitals.

The chronic homeless problem isn't because there is no help, its because the homeless are incapable or unwilling to seek that help out and if they arent willing to take the help there is little to no legal recourse for the city or state to force them into help.

The homeless issue is a direct offshoot of the demonetization of mental hospitals most famously done with One Flew Over the Cooko's nest. And dont get me wrong, there were abuses but those were very overblown, the vast majority of patients were treated well.

Even treatments like "electroshock" which people think of as literally electrocuting people is a urban myth, electroshock was targeted low voltage electrical impulses, they didnt work but it wasnt the electric chair.

Anyway, the only way to fix homelessness is to give power to the cities to involuntarily comitt the mentally ill/drug addicted that are perpetually living on the street. Im sure we could find a way to have adequate checks to limit abuse as much as possible.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Obadno

This will not solve the problem . . . .

Even treatments like "electroshock" which people think of as literally electrocuting people is a urban myth, electroshock was targeted low voltage electrical impulses, they didnt work but it wasnt the electric chair.

Anyway, the only way to fix homelessness is to give power to the cities to involuntarily comitt the mentally ill/drug addicted that are perpetually living on the street. Im sure we could find a way to have adequate checks to limit abuse as much as possible.

I disagree with only one thing in this long post: Electroshock may work in limited situations. It seems crude and brutal (more than it actually is--the person receiving it is anesthetized), but for targetted condtions, mainly severe depression, unresponsive to anything else, it seemed to work for some patients but maybe not well enough to be justified:

The effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy: a literature review.
Read J1, Bentall R.
Author information
Abstract

AIM:
To review the literature on the efficacy of electroconvulsive therapy [ECT], with a particular focus on depression, its primary target group.

METHODS:
PsycINFO, Medline, previous reviews and meta-analyses were searched in an attempt to identify all studies comparing ECT with simulated-ECT [SECT].

RESULTS:
These placebo controlled studies show minimal support for effectiveness with either depression or 'schizophrenia' during the course of treatment (i.e., only for some patients, on some measures, sometimes perceived only by psychiatrists but not by other raters), and no evidence, for either diagnostic group, of any benefits beyond the treatment period. There are no placebo-controlled studies evaluating the hypothesis that ECT prevents suicide, and no robust evidence from other kinds of studies to support the hypothesis.

CONCLUSIONS:
Given the strong evidence (summarised here) of persistent and, for some, permanent brain dysfunction, primarily evidenced in the form of retrograde and anterograde amnesia, and the evidence of a slight but significant increased risk of death, the cost-benefit analysis for ECT is so poor that its use cannot be scientifically justified.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21322506

However, in a city like San Francisco, even if all the mentally ill were institutionalized, there are also plenty of people who are not mentally ill or not to the point that any court would allow them to be involuntarily hospitalized (usually, a danger to themselves or others). This becomes simply a matter of enforcing existing laws about obstructing sidewalks, public decency and so forth.

But now along comes:

California Bill Defends the Right of the Homeless to Rest in Public
March 28, 2016 Journalism for Social Change

In January, California State Senator Carol Liu (D-La Cañada Flintridge) introduced a bill that aims to protect the right of California’s homeless to “rest” in public spaces.

Senate Bill 876 would de-criminalize homelessness by ultimately limiting local sanitation and law enforcement agencies’ ability to treat sleeping on the street as a criminal act, and remove and destroy homeless people’s belongings . . . .

SB 876 asserts that homeless people cannot be discriminated against simply because they are unhoused. This means that they have the right to “to use and to move freely in public spaces, the right to rest in public spaces and to protect oneself from the elements, the right to eat in any public space in which having food is not prohibited, and the right to perform religious observances in public spaces.”

https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/...rest-in-public

[Gantz]

What companies, besides Salesforce, would be subject to this tax?
I wonder if any of the companies subject to this will try to relocate to other Bay Area cities in a couple of years.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Gantz

What companies, besides Salesforce, would be subject to this tax?
I wonder if any of the companies subject to this will try to relocate to other Bay Area cities in a couple of years.

Will the Bay Area quietly lose another Fortune 500 headquarters to Texas?
By Mark Calvey – Senior Reporter, San Francisco Business Times
a day ago

McKesson Corp. appears to be setting the stage to quietly shift its corporate headquarters to Dallas, where it operates a division headquarters.

For its part, McKesson denied that its headquarters is in play . . . .

The company's website notes that its next CEO, Brian Tyler, lives in Las Colinas. Tyler will succeed CEO John Hammergren, who is retiring on March 31, 2019.

As Texas-based economist Jim Gaines noted, “What do you think? If your company is based in San Francisco and the CEO lives in Las Colinas, that makes for one hell of a commute.”

Last year, McKesson sold its high-profile San Francisco headquarters building at One Post St. for more than $300 million as part of a sale-leaseback transaction.

This week, McKesson might feel as though it has a big target on its back with the passage of San Francisco's Prop. C, which places a gross receipts tax on San Francisco-based companies with more than $50 million in revenue. McKesson tops the list of largest San Francisco-based public companies, with annual revenue of $198.5 billion in fiscal year 2017.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...493&j=84945881

[Pedestrian]

The additional money brought in from the tax — estimated at $250 to $300 million per year — could house 4,000 homeless people, provide 1,000 additional shelter beds over five years, and fund other services like legal assistance and mental health services, according to analysis done by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

The tax will almost double the city's spending on services related to homelessness; during the 2017-18 fiscal year, San Francisco spent approximately $380 million. It will also increase overall business tax revenue for the city by up to one-third, according to a report by the Office of Economic Analysis.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce came out strongly against the ballot measure, saying the tax could lead to job loss as levies on San Francisco businesses continue to mount. Another gross receipts tax on commercial rents to fund child care and education was approved by the voters in June. In August, Uber and Lyft signed on to allow San Francisco to tax a percentage of their net ride revenues, with the money allocated toward the city’s transportation infrastructure and operations improvements.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...585&j=84951361

[JoeMusashi]

When are San Franciscans and Californians in general going to be at their breaking point? Can you really subsidize every bum, drug addict, mentally ill person, illegal immigrant, criminal, public union employee, poor person, out of stater, environmentalist, and the millions of other people I’m forgetting? This progressive techie hubris, isn’t it reminiscent of what happened to Detroit and the Rust Belt? Is tech invulnerable in California and in the US?

Having only one political party and one ideology in a state of 40 million people is terrifying. Sadly, some want the entire country to be like this and it probably will become that way with California political locusts rapidly bringing their progressivism and leftism to the lower cost states across the West that gave them sanctuary. That’s the scary part about progressivism and socialism, it’s hard to ever step back from it. The mere suggestion makes you bad person (and ostracized) in the eyes of progressive society therefore few people will be brave enough to take a stand being the ‘mean parent/bad cop’. Once people are accustomed to these lavish benefits and government assistance, how can you ever take it away from them without creating a revolution? You just need to keep spending more money to keep people happy.

That’s what California is laying the groundwork for when the only people who can live there are the affluent and the poor. The only question is if it is going to be a Trump style-Revolution or a Marxist one. If it is the latter, then the rich will flee leaving California to become Venezuela.

Whoever said that ‘states are the laboratories of democracy’ was on to something.

[BrownTown]

$85,000 per person is absolutely unconscionable. That's well over the median income in the US. My brother lives in SF and makes like $120k a year. Sounds good until you see a law like this and realize his family of 4 could be making $340k if he would just quit his job and become homeless. I'm all for helping people but it should be clear from the costs that the only people actually being helped here are corrupt politicians and overpaid unions. Even if something actually gets done like giving these people homes it won't solve anything because then everybody and their brother will start saying they're homeless just to get all these handouts.

[antinimby]

^ Plus it will be a lifetime commitment. No homeless will have any incentive to get back on their feet, find work and support themselves. And with no need to work, they will have lots of free time on their hands and we know what happens then (hint: it won't be to volunteer or do good).

Basically with socialism, you are saying to the population, we are punishing those who wants to work and succeed while we reward all the slackers, lazy and lowlives.

And it will be never ending because there will never be a point in time that there will never be homeless.

Now, I am not saying that we shouldn't have any safety net for the downtrodden (the other extreme) but it's clear we have swung so far to the other extreme that it is just as ridiculous. There is a middle ground but this country still needs to learn its lessons first before we finally settle there (in the middle).