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San Francisco's budget for homeless is over $300 million per year. If you add the additional $300 million they got from their tax on companies, that's over $600

San Francisco's budget for homeless is over $300 million per year. If you add the additional $300 million they got from their tax on companies, that's over $600 million per year. Even at $300 million, we have no idea how that money is being spent. There are 7500 homeless people in San Francisco, and yet Market Street looks like something out of a 3rd world country. San Francisco is mishandling the budget, plain and simple. They have more than enough money, and yet they are completely opaque and they have zero accountability. This is the government that we want to give MORE money to, because somehow more money is the solution to this problem? Hell no. Hold the politicians accountable. Get a proper budget that will focus money on where it will most help and make people accountable. Fire those in charge and put people who are willing to help without wanting to suckle from the teat of public funding and taxation.

lucaspm98 7y ago
Do you have any sources about those numbers or other information about where this money is going? That works out to $40,000 per homeless person, or almost double the pre-tax annual income working full time at California's minimum wage.
- epistasis 7y ago
  It's an extremely dishonest look at the numbers. I'm having trouble finding the article from sfchronicle.com now, but the idea that each person is getting an average of $40,000 is comically wrong. The homeless population is always in flux: new people become homeless, some people get housed, and some people migrate. Treating a year time span as having a static population of X is just an unrealistic way to look at it. There are something like 20,000 different homeless individuals in the city throughout the course of the year. Something like 15,000 end up getting some sort of services. However, that's not really much of the story, because the bulk of that $300M budget from prior years goes directly to the easiest and cheapest intervention to stop homelessness: paying people's rent. For families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, a single unexpected expense can get them kicked out. Without that $300M, the problem would be immensely worse, on a huge scale.

lucaspm98 7y ago

Do you have any sources about those numbers or other information about where this money is going? That works out to $40,000 per homeless person, or almost double the pre-tax annual income working full time at California's minimum wage.

epistasis 7y ago
It's an extremely dishonest look at the numbers. I'm having trouble finding the article from sfchronicle.com now, but the idea that each person is getting an average of $40,000 is comically wrong. The homeless population is always in flux: new people become homeless, some people get housed, and some people migrate. Treating a year time span as having a static population of X is just an unrealistic way to look at it. There are something like 20,000 different homeless individuals in the city throughout the course of the year. Something like 15,000 end up getting some sort of services. However, that's not really much of the story, because the bulk of that $300M budget from prior years goes directly to the easiest and cheapest intervention to stop homelessness: paying people's rent. For families and individuals living paycheck to paycheck, a single unexpected expense can get them kicked out. Without that $300M, the problem would be immensely worse, on a huge scale.