The wealthy businesses of San Francisco could face the homeless tax

SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco is recognized around the world as a place of aggressive milking, outdoor addiction and vast camps of tents, dirt and desperation all the more remarkable for the immense wealth of the city.

Some streets are so dirty that officials have launched a special "poop patrol". A young technical worker created "Snapcrap" – an application to report dirt. Morning commuters are walking briskly in front of the homeless huddled against the subway walls. In the city's sordid city center, frail and sick people wander in wheelchairs or stumble, sometimes half-dressed.

The situation became so critical that a coalition of activists gathered enough signatures to put to the vote on November 6, during the secret ballot, hundreds of the wealthiest businesses in San Francisco to help thousands of homeless and mentally ill residents. year in Seattle. Proposal C would raise $ 300 million a year, almost double what the city is already spending on homelessness.

"It's the worst it has ever been," said Marc Benioff, founder of the Salesforce cloud computing giant and fourth-generation San Franciscan, who supports the measure even as his company would pay $ 10 million additional dollars a year if it passed. "Nobody should have to live like that, they do not need to live like that, we can control that."

"We have to do it, we have to try something," said Sunshine Powers, owner of the tie-dye dye shop, Love on Haight, in the historic Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. "If my community is bad, no one will want to come here."

The proposal is the latest battle between big business and social service advocates who demand that US companies pay to solve the inequities exacerbated by their success. In San Francisco, the fight has also taken an intriguing twist between the recently elected mayor, London Breed, who supports the city's Chamber of Commerce to demand the negative vote, and the philanthropist Benioff, whose company is most large private employer in San Francisco with 8,400 workers.

Breed objected to the measure, saying that it lacked collaboration, could draw homeless people from neighboring counties to the city and cost middle-class jobs in retail and services. San Francisco has already significantly increased spending on homelessness, she said, with no noticeable improvement.

San Francisco spent $ 380 million on a $ 10 billion budget last year for homelessness services.

"I have to make decisions with my head, not just with my heart," Breed said. "I do not believe that doubling what we spend for homelessness without a new responsibility, so that we do not even spend what we have now effectively, it's a good government."

Cities on the west coast are struggling with rampant homelessness, driven in part by the growing number of high-paying technology jobs that discourage low-income residents from living in a tight housing market. A family of four in San Francisco earning $ 117,000 is considered low income.

Business prevailed in Seattle, when executives in June abolished a per-employee tax that would have raised $ 50 million a year after Amazon and Starbucks backed off. In July, the Cupertino City Council in Silicon Valley, abolished a similar entry fee after opposition from its main employer, Apple.

Mountain View residents will vote this fall, however, on a per-employee tax that is expected to generate $ 6 million a year, largely from Google, for transit projects.

The measure taken in San Francisco is different in that it would levy the tax primarily on revenue rather than on the number of employees – an average increase of one-half per cent of corporate revenues exceeding $ 50 million per year. year. It was also put on the ballot by citizens, not by elected officials.

Online payment processing company Stripe has voiced opposition and paid $ 120,000 to the campaign against Proposition C, but other companies have remained silent. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, comprised of representatives from Microsoft, LinkedIn and Oracle, is leading the fight.

The city's economic analysis office predicts that propulsion C would raise $ 250 to $ 300 million a year and help reduce the homeless population in the city. Nearly 400 companies would be affected, with the Internet and financial services sectors accounting for almost half the cost.

The city has said that confidentiality prohibits disclosure of tax information, but some of the companies that are supposed to pay the most are big names in big industries. Wells Fargo, the Gap retailer and the Uber platform declined to comment.

Pharmaceutical distributor McKesson addressed questions to a private sector professional association, the Employment Committee, which described the measure as error. Utility Pacific Gas & Electric has stated that it has not taken a position. Twitter declined to comment, but CEO Jack Dorsey said via tweet last week that he trusted Breed to solve the problem.

"Everyone can look at the status quo and understand that it does not work, but more money alone is not the only solution," said Jess Montejano, campaign spokesperson " No on C ".

Benioff is not in agreement. An initiative of $ 37 million over two years, which he helped get started with the city and to which he paid more than $ 11 million, housed nearly 400 families through rent subsidies, a he declared.

Benioff has pledged at least $ 2 million in business resources and personal resources for the November tax campaign. A report from the city's chief economist finally convinced him that he could have reduced homelessness while resulting in a net loss of up to 900 jobs, or 0.1% of all job losses. jobs.

"I said," Well, I'm the biggest employer in the city, and the city is declining relative to homelessness and cleanliness. We must act now, "he said.

At least half of the new income would go to permanent housing and at least a quarter to services for people with serious behavioral problems. A count of one night in 2017 found about 7,500 people homeless in San Francisco. More than half had lived in the city for at least a decade.

Tracey Mixon and her daughter Maliya, 8, are among the homeless hidden.

Mixon, 47, from San Francisco, lives and works in the notoriously dangerous neighborhood infested with drugs. They were forced to leave their rental this summer, in part because the company that ran its property had lost its federal certification, she said recently while she was working as a border guard.

One of the most difficult problems was finding a place to go the day the mother and daughter were chased away from an emergency shelter reserved only for the night.

"I have to protect her from drug users," she said. "I have to protect her from people who could fight."

In Haight Street, the street that played a central role in "The summer of love," 22-year-old Stormy Nichole Day said she would like a place to live. Currently, Day sleeps in a door. She could flourish if her basic needs were met, she said.

"And that includes a house, a place to cook and a place to take a shower."