3 ms·

How would raising property taxes stop homeless people from acting belligerently in public?

• raldi 12y ago
  It would pay for better homeless care and more, higher-quality police officers.
  • BadassFractal 12y ago
    Admittedly I don't know much about this, but it remains to be seen whether this is an issue that stems from the city not having enough money. Fascinating how this is somewhat reminiscent of the whole education discussion we've had for years: schools need more money vs schools are terrible at allocating money correctly.
  • discardorama 12y ago
    Ah, another of those "let's throw more money at the problem, and maybe that'll fix it" people. Firstly: the City has no shortage of money. The City's budget this year is a whopping $8.6 Billion dollars. For a city of 850,000 people, that's quite a lot. Secondly: the City already spends a lot on homelessness; the direct spending per homeless person exceeds $12,000/year. There are task forces galore on this problem, and nothing makes a dent. Thirdly: SFPD is already among the highest paid in the country. Rookie officers can make more than $100K/year with overtime. There is no accountability; and they'd rather shoot than treat a mentally ill person properly: http://www.vice.com/read/most-of-the-people-killed-by-the-san-francisco-police-department-were-mentally-ill http://www.vice.com/read/most-of-the-people-killed-by-the-sa... And finally: this "throw more money without accountability" approach is a part of the problem. It provides an economic incentive to do a shitty job, because hey, doing a bad job gets more money!!
    • iamdave 12y ago
      "The City's budget this year is a whopping $8.6 Billion dollars. For a city of 850,000 people, that's quite a lot." Seriously!? /me heads to the googles
      • garretruh 12y ago
        It looks like that is indeed the case://openbook.sfgov.org/openbooks/cgi-bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_action=cognosViewer&ui.action=run&ui.object=%2fcontent%2ffolder%5b%40name%3d%27Reports%27%5d%2freport%5b%40name%3d%27Budget%27%5d&ui.name=20Budget&run.outputFormat=&run.prompt=false
      • Mandatum 12y ago
        $10,000 per person? That's more than a third of the annual income per person for that state. Wow.
        • mikeyouse 12y ago
          But not for people in the city.. SF County is the 2nd wealthiest in the state and gets significant tax revenue from tourists (via Sales taxes, Hotel taxes, etc.).
          • Chronic29 12y ago
            The trolling in posts below is top notch.
    • DanBC 12y ago
      Just checking but what would you do?