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When San Francisco voters envisioned a 2018 voting measure that would impose the largest tax hike in the city’s history to fund homeless services, critics warned that the city’s spending plan initiative was vague and irresponsible. Now some of that money is going to fund very expensive tents.
On Wednesday, staff from the city’s homeless and supportive housing department appeared before the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Appropriations Committee to ask for $ 20 million over the next two fiscal years to continue. to operate six tent camps “for safe sleeping”.
This safe sleep program was initiated at the start of the pandemic to move people out of overcrowded shelters and into open-air and socially remote campsites where the homeless had access to showers, meals and safety. 24 hours a day.
The total cost of the program in its first year was about $ 18.2 million for about 260 tents, which, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, is about $ 61,000 per tent per year, or double the amount. median cost of an apartment in the city.
Those high costs, and the proposal by city staff to continue funding what was supposed to be a temporary program in the era of the pandemic, raised eyebrows at supervisors at Wednesday’s meeting.
The $ 20 million requested for the program “appears to be an exorbitant amount for something that we are trying to push through.” [away from] as quickly as possible, ”Supervisor Ahsha Safai said at the hearing. “When you factor in 260 beds at $ 15 million for the first year, that’s $ 57,000 per tent.
Gigi Whitley, a staff member with the Homelessness and Supportive Housing Department, told Safai that of the $ 18 million the city spent on safe sleep sites, about $ 1.2 million was for showers, $ 3 million to provide on-site meals and $ 13 million were to provide staff and 24-hour security.
The $ 13 million was needed for the city to be “good neighbors and good stewards,” Whitley said, telling Safai that round-the-clock staff was “necessary so that someone does not leave the site. and don’t go into the neighborhood and maybe pitch his tent there. “
The $ 15 million requested by the ministry over the next fiscal year reflects expected cost reductions, she said, citing supposed savings resulting from streamlining program administration and finding cheaper suppliers. to provide showers.
Existing safe sleeping sites are needed to absorb the people the city is trying to move out of the hotels, where they have been accommodated during the pandemic. Currently, there is not enough accommodation capacity in the city to accommodate all of the homeless currently in these hotels.
All of the funding for the Safe Sleep Program comes from money raised by the controversial Proposition C, which voters passed in 2018. The initiative raised already high taxes for San Francisco businesses by 33% in a bid to collect around $ 300 million per year. spent on homelessness, supportive housing and mental health services, nearly double the $ 380 million the city was already spending.
You would think that a ballot initiative taxing businesses to pay for homeless services would be popular in ultra-liberal San Francisco. And at least with voters, it was. Proposal C was adopted with 60% of the votes.
(Whether the measure required a two-thirds majority to pass was a major legal controversy that was not resolved until September last year, when the California Supreme Court refused to challenge the law. .)
The ballot initiative met with stiff opposition from business leaders, including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and many elected officials in the city, including the Mayor of London Breed, State Senator Scott Wiener (DSan Francisco) and State Assembly Member David Chiu (DSan Francisco).
The magnitude of the tax increase included in Proposition C and the fact that it was a tax on gross receipts, which taxes companies on their overall income, regardless of their profitability. Tax policy fools are usually pretty low on gross revenue taxes, arguing that they raise prices and limit economic growth. States and cities (with a few notable exceptions) have stopped using them.
Another big problem raised by critics was that the city was already doing a bad job of effectively spending existing dollars on homeless people, and Proposition C would only make that problem worse.
“Proposal C does not verify the money the City is already spending. It does not include a detailed spending plan for the $ 300 million in taxes it seeks to add, nor regular audits of that money. nor adequate public control over how it is spent, ”Race wrote in a now-deleted Medium post. “Our spending on the homeless has increased dramatically in recent years with no noticeable improvement in conditions. Before doubling the tax bill overnight, San Franciscans deserve to be held accountable for the money they are already paying. . “
This criticism seems justified by the high costs of the safe sleep program.
That’s not to say the program doesn’t add value to its beneficiaries, as the Chronicle reported in March:
A young man who lived at the site said it was still significantly better than living on the streets, even though his tent was blown by the wind the night before. At the site, he has food and security guards watching over him, and he also knows that if he leaves his stuff, his stuff will likely be safe.
Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the City’s Coalition on Homelessness, said the city made the right decision at the start of the pandemic to create the tent program as quickly as possible. She said many homeless people even prefer sites to traditional shelters because a tent gives them more privacy than a cot in a large room.
That said, having privacy and a safe place to leave your belongings are also perks offered by traditional housing of the type that San Francisco makes incredibly difficult and expensive to build due to excessive regulation.
If the city were more supportive of new development, chances are it would have far fewer people on the streets and depend on an inefficient municipal bureaucracy for housing.
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