Normally, expensive areas would have a proportional amount more to spend. But California's Proposition 13 locked the land values that property taxes are based o

Normally, expensive areas would have a proportional amount more to spend. But California's Proposition 13 locked the land values that property taxes are based on to 1978 levels. And in SF specifically, rent control laws lock tenants into the same rent price as when they started renting (for pre-1978 apartments, which is most of them). Therefore the seemingly "expensive" rent of rentable apartments in SF is not an indicator of the actual rent being paid by most renters, much less of the taxes the owners pay to fund things like schools. So even if open apartments are rented for $4k/month, the level of service residents are able to fund could be more like that of a poorer city where apartments rent for $1.5k/month.