San Fran: Raise Homeless Funding Because $300 Million Budget Leaves Feces on Street
The voters of San Francisco will decide on a ballot initiative in November to tax businesses more in order to increase spending on a homelessness program.
The initiative, if passed, would tax companies’ revenue above $50 million each year about a half a percent.
The tax would hit the tech-heavy industry in Silicon Valley the most, with more than 1,000 businesses earning more than $50 million a year.
The tax would raise about $300 million a year — doubling the amount of money the city already spends on homelessness, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
“I think the city is really ready for this,” said a San Francisco small business owner and one of three petitioners on the measure, Christin Evans. “We have a lot of momentum behind us, and more than a majority of the voting population is renters. We’re polling very well.”
San Francisco is apparently drowning in human feces, San Francisco Democratic Mayor London Breed told KNTV in an interview Friday.
“There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here,” Breed said. “That is a huge problem and we are not just talking about from dogs — we’re talking about from humans.”
The Associated Press reports that one of the biggest tech companies in the San Francisco area is urging others in the industry to take bigger steps to help with the homeless crisis.
Marc Benioff, founder and chief executive of cloud-computing company Salesforce, has urged others in the tech community to help address the city’s problems with homelessness.
The city’s largest tech employer said in a statement that it has given more than $4 million to the cause and that it is “evaluating the potential ballot measure to carefully assess its merits in addressing this important issue.”
The city of Seattle once planned a similar tax on businesses to try and help with its homeless crisis. Seattle’s tax targeted companies that made $20 million or more in annual sales.
But after Amazon paused construction of a new building, the city ended up voting against the legislation, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported.
Seattle’s proposal was to add a “head tax” — a tax of 26 cents per employee, per hour for Seattle-based companies. Amazon’s stand against that tax caused an uproar from big labor unions, culminating in protests outside Amazon headquarters.
Nevertheless, the city decided not to add the tax.
A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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