By: Muhammad Ubaid
Brief Description on the discourse:
A city such as San Francisco is often praised for its booming job market, astonishing nature, ethnic diversity as well as wide variety of outdoor facilities. However, with such range of luxuries provided in the city, there is certainly a disproportionate amount of time spent on fixing the ongoing issue within the city: Homelessness. While the city continues to act upon following the ideology of capitalism and laissez-faire, some people are being left behind. As a result, it makes homelessness an issue that city should be more worried about eliminating, instead of just focusing on the infrastructure of the city. While a capitalist society affects the rise in homelessness due to corporate benefits, on the other hand it also helps fight the issue of homelessness by creating more money for the overall economy.
Defining the Problem:
Homelessness is everyone’s issue. The last official city count in 2017 estimated the adult homeless population to be 7,499, but many advocates say the number of people living on the street is higher. Despite the fact that we know there’s a problem, there isn’t one clear and coordinated solution. Many compounding factors work together to cause homelessness including lack of mental health services, supportive housing cuts in the 1980s, lack of affordable housing, substance abuse, and the increased cost of living in San Francisco. By 2016, total spending (including housing and treatment) was believed to be $241 million annually. However, much of this spending is focused on housing the formerly homeless, or those at risk, and not the currently homeless.
Historical Evidence about the reason behind homelessness:
For a quick history lesson, homelessness as a systemic problem started in the 1980’s when Governor Ronald Reagan closed the state mental hospitals, and again when President Reagan’s administration slashed the HUD (Housing and Urban Development) budget, which provided cities and states with funds used to build and maintain subsidized housing. Since then, nearly every administration has reduced the federal budget for housing.
Current Corporate Advantage within the city of San Francisco:
The Trump administration has only accelerated the loss of federal housing funds, cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and has proposed slashing the HUD budget by double digits.
There are costs to decisions made at City Hall, and the decision to give a tax break to Twitter and other tech companies to colonize mid-Market, and the decision to allow private shuttles to use Muni stops to make it more attractive for high-paid tech workers to live in places where there used to be low-income people. Those decisions are part of the reason there are so many people homeless in the city, despite all the money we spend on supportive housing.
Some suggestions improve the homelessness situation?
- We know that housing solves homelessness and that’s where Prop C comes in.
Here’s how Prop C works — by levying a small tax on corporations with over $50 million in gross receipts (only 3% of all businesses would pay that), the City Controller estimates we would generate $250-$300 million annually for homeless housing and services. Overall, that’s an average of 0.5% tax on the gross receipts of San Francisco’s biggest corporations, all of which just benefited from Trump’s massive corporate tax break. Prop C offers an opportunity for San Francisco to make a real investment because right now, as Heather Knight of the Chronicle points out, we spend about $11 per day (roughly $3,800 a year) on each of the city’s estimated 15,000 people who are experiencing homelessness and we need to do more. - Eric Mar, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors, announced the proposal last week for a 1.5 percent payroll tax that would serve as a form of indemnification for what he described as the downside of the technology boom. Tech companies have been ”a tremendous benefit to the city in many ways,” Mr. Mar said. ”But I don’t think they’ve been paying their fair share.” As a result, through the taxation of tech companies, the city can make money from the tech tax can help support programs for the homeless and the housing affordability crisis.
- It costs the city $61,000 between ER’s, jail, and support services per homeless person living on the streets. And only $12,000/yr to provide a homeless person with permanent housing, giving them free safe housing, instead of suffering on the street. So buying the homeless housing is not only the right thing to do, it’s also saves the government a lot of money. Over $40,000/yr per person
Why it is much harder to be poor now in a capitalist society?
As of now, wages – especially for the poorest Americans – have not kept up with rising housing costs. The NILCH report found that the average US worker making the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour would have to put in more than 94 hours a week to afford the monthly market rate of $1,103 for a two-bedroom unit. In California, a worker making the 2017 state minimum of $10.50 an hour would have to work three full-time jobs – 120 hours – to afford a two-bedroom apartment.
How much has changed in regards to homelessness:
- Tech companies, nonprofits, and other entities have poured millions, if not billions, of dollars into “fixes” for homelessness over the years, including tiny homes
- Over the past 14 years, the city has housed 26,000 homeless people, many of them the chronically troubled type who had been on the streets more than a year
- The city helps 2000 homeless each year since 2014, yet our homeless population remains steady, because people become homeless again and other people fall into homeless for the first time.
Hence, the notion that capitalism always infiltrates homelessness is a false narrative in some ways given the numerous ways the homelessness communities can benefit from, such as, taxation of corporations, employment opportunities (even though there is a wage gap) and helping the city to have funds to be able to reduce homelessness each year. On the contrary, it can also affect homelessness since corporate culture creates more money for themselves and pay less taxes, they can also make people lose their homes if they are making an average income. As I research further regarding the topic of homelessness, I would look further about ways in which capitalism affects homelessness.
Sources:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/SF-homelessness-chief-Thrilled-with-13031080.php
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/07/who-should-pay-for-a-citys-homelessness-crisis/565718/
Politics Lab SF 