Inside the battle over San Francisco's homeless tax



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She had been made to stay there for a while, so she would have someplace to take her newborn. They did not get to the top of the list until he was a year and a half.

"They said they would help us," says Evans, now 31. "They did not."

Homeless for the past 15 years, Evans is intimately familiar with the shortcomings of the city's approach to homelessness. Now it's working to promote Proposition C, a tax on the gross receipts of the city's largest companies. The income from the tax would add $ 300 million to San Francisco's homeless budget, double what it is now. It would be fund shelters, mental health services, addiction treatment, and prevention to keep people from becoming homeless.

Robert Benioff (Salesforce) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square) arguing about it on Twitter.
Benioff has become the face of the fight for Prop C. His company is the largest employer in the city. He is a native San Francisco, responsible for the tallest skyscraper in the city, a major donor to its public schools, and the name on its biggest children's hospital.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has become the face of the fight for Prop C.

For the past three weeks, he has sponsored the initiative, investing $ 2 million in sales and sales. He's given speeches and non-stop interviews and fought with opponents on social media.

"It's a crisis of homelessness." But it's a crisis of cleanliness. "But you can also see it's a crisis of inequality," Benioff told CNN Business. "This is a city with 70 billionaires We have some of the most successful companies in the world.

Few other tech leaders are vocally supporting the measure, but some have quietly donated to the No on C campaign. San Francisco mayor London Breed and companies including Square, Stripe, Lyft and Visa all opposed it. The main talking points against Prop it is not possible, it does not give the new mayor has a chance to implement its own plan, and it's more .

But at the heart of the debate for tech companies is a little known tax rule that would cause some to pay more money. Companies in the United States of America and the United States of America, United States of America. The city's treasurer is responsible for the classification, which predates the fight over Prop C.

A recent study by San Francisco's Office of Economic Analysis found that the impact on the market and economy would be small. Aim Dorsey previously indicated the tax issue could eventually lead to its relocating.
Andrew Loy begs along a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco, California in June 2016. Homelessness is on the rise.

"We're happy to pay our taxes," Dorsey said in tweet earlier this month. "We just want to be treated fairly with respect to our peer companies, many of whom [sic] are 2-10x larger than us. Otherwise we do not know how to grow in the city. That's heartbreaking for us and we want to keep it going. "

Benioff is not interested in the nuance of tax codes. In tweets and numerous interviews, he has framed the issues in dramatic and stark terms. You are here to help the homeless or you are against it. He or she is not guilty of giving back to the city of charity, Most of Benioff's opponents have gone quiet, realizing that trying to debate details about Prop C in public with its biggest supporter is not effective.

"The people who give are always the people who give," said Benioff. "Anyone who does not want to give back, I will help pack their boxes."

The proposal was in the works long before Benioff joined the cause. It was created by the Coalition on Homelessness, a 31-year old organization that works on policy and directly with San Francisco's homeless population. Its office is only 1.3 miles from the new Salesforce tower, but it exists in a different world. A cluttered second floor space in the heart of the neighborhood Tenderloin, it looks on the sidewalks of the homeless people that it is trying to help.

Jennifer Friedenbach's Coalition of Homelessness Executive Director The group looked at previously unsuccessful measures in San Francisco and other cities while developing.

"What we were finding we needed to go to, we needed to target the folks who would be most able to pay," said Friedenbach.

For example, a recently failed Seattle proposal included a "head tax" that would tax companies like Amazon based on their number of employees. Prop C is based on gross receipts of corporate revenue. To avoid hurting small businesses, it costs $ 50 million in revenue a year. The tax averages out to .05% a year – just big enough to make a difference, but probably not enough to hurt the companies or lead to layoffs.

"This is one half of one percent, it's immaterial … these numbers are so small, they mean nothing to these companies," said Benioff. "For them to squawk over or to complain and say they will not give $ 10 million or $ 20 million to the number one issue in the city, really calls into question their motives for being in business at all."

After years of bouncing between shelters, cars, and the street, Jackie Evans recently moved into her own home. She's hopeful Prop C will finally improve the city's homelessness issues because it was created by working with the people in the thick of the crisis, like herself.

"Having more money means helping more people," said Evans.

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