
Proposition C - dsr12
https://stripe.com/press/prop-c
======
lisper
Between 2006 and 2008 I spent a lot of time on the streets interviewing
homeless people for a documentary film I was making [1]. One of the things
they often mentioned was the "homeless-industrial complex" (a phrase coined by
one of my subjects, not me). There are a lot of organizations that make a lot
of money "helping" homeless people, and their continued existence depends on
there _not_ being an effective solution to the problem. Homeless people are
literally their bread-and-butter, so they have a perverse incentive to ensure
a steady supply of "product". Similar perverse incentives play themselves out
in other areas of our society, like privately run prisons.

[1] [http://graceofgodmovie.com](http://graceofgodmovie.com)

~~~
danans
Providing your own documentary with its editorial biases as a citation to back
your own statements is not credible, especially when it makes such strong
claims of bad faith among organizations working to alleviate homelessness.

Can you provide independent citations that back your claims about the
existence of a "homeless-industrial complex"?

~~~
lisper
User23 very kindly provided a heap of references in a sibling comment, but
just for the record: I did not intend to claim that the HIC exists, only that
my subjects talked about it, and it seems like a plausible hypothesis to me.

------
asah
IMHO mandatory reading before posting on this issue: [http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Poin...](http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Point-in-Time-Count-General-FINAL-6.21.17.pdf)

The data is incredibly detailed, absolutely fascinating and messy as you'd
expect, dispelling a lot of the overly simplistic rumors like other states
"shipping" SF homeless people, homeless people all being one type of person or
another etc etc etc

~~~
feross
Glad to see this report being referenced. A friend and I volunteered to gather
this data at the beginning of 2017 along with hundreds of other volunteers.
It's an interesting process. You show up, they assign you specific streets to
walk and you just count up homeless people, noting their sex, rough age, and
dwelling type (improvised structure, vehicle, etc.).

I encourage anyone who is interested to volunteer for the next SF homelessness
count, likely in January 2019 (They do one every 2 years).

~~~
deathanatos
_Thank you_ for taking the time to do this. I have found the referenced
document quite valuable towards driving more rational debate around the
subject.

------
joshuawright11
Is homelessness in SF really about affordable housing? Obviously San Francisco
has insane housing prices but there are dozens and dozens of shelters &
programs (I volunteer at a couple) for homeless people to take refuge and get
their life back together.

As I understand it (and as my friend who is an SF police officer where 90% of
his job is dealing with the homeless), the much larger problem is SF's (&
perhaps society in general's) failure to provide institutionalized care for
people with severe mental disabilities.

No amount of money, support systems, or opportunity for getting off the street
is going to help people with severe schizophrenia or dementia who have no
family or safety net. A lot of these people the only solution is for them to
be institutionalized. Unfortunately, there isn't much of a way for someone to
be institutionalized against their will (unless they are causing danger of
harm to themselves or others) so they continue to live on the streets.

I think what this city really needs is a place to send people deemed in need
of institutionalizing, and the ability for that to be determined. Of course
that would never fly in a place like SF, but I think it would be a happier
life for those people than life on the streets.

~~~
adamrezich
Being born in 1991 I didn't realize this until recently but apparently we used
to be better about this before these institutions shut down in the 80s-90s. I
still don't really understand why this happened or how the resulting issues
haven't been addressed.

~~~
gumby
> apparently we used to be better about this before these institutions shut
> down in the 80s-90s. I still don't really understand why this happened or
> how the resulting issues haven't been addressed.

There are two explanations, idealistic and cynical; I'll let you decide what
percentage of accuracy applies to each (neither were 0% or 100%).

The _idealistic_ justification was that the institutional option was pretty
grim (think "one flew over the cuckoo's nest") and that many of those patients
would do better at home or in halfway houses.

The _cynical_ explanation was that this was at the beginning of the huge anti-
tax / anti-government wave that began with Reagan's election and continues
today: closing the institutions cut government expenditure.

------
olliej
Part of the problem for SF is that a critical part of “solving” homelessness
is actually having homes. But a very large group of people (that I cynically
suspect overlaps a lot of the pro-prop C people) also fight the addition of
apartment buildings. I saw numbers along the lines of 5400 homeless people in
SF a long time ago, but even if that number were the same now, that means you
need to add enough buildings to support 5400 bed rooms.

Basically there’s no way you can “fight homelessness” and “fight
apartments/evil gentrifying landlords”, and actually expect to do anything
about homelessness.

~~~
1024core
I live in SF, have for over a decade. I know several homeless people quite
well. All of them keep getting kicked out of housing because of bad behavior
that they just cannot help themselves from doing. They do not have the ability
to live by themselves. They need supportive housing, and a path to get out of
homelessness. None of the options today focuses on post-housing issues.

~~~
olliej
Same here.

A lot are also alcoholics and/or addicts - this is one of those things where
saving money is the short term (not managing the homelessness problem before
it got to this point) results in a higher cost in the long term - now you not
only have to manage homelessness, you also hav to help the existing homeless
_recover_ from long term homelessness.

You also have the long term costs of assisting those with mental illness (as a
result of "saving money" by closing down all state level support for mental
illness in the 80s - I'm not saying that was a panacea, but having the support
helped a lot of people that currently get no help).

Politicians love "saving tax payer money" through short term things like this,
because they know that by the time someone has to fix their mess they've moved
on/retired and they don't have to deal with it.

------
abalone
_> If homelessness was just a question of money, this issue would already be
solved. While cities report inconsistently, San Francisco currently spends
around $430 per city resident per year on services and programs for the
homeless, compared to $260 in New York and $110 in Los Angeles. Yet the
problem in our city is worse, and despite increases in spending, has continued
to worsen._

Can somebody please explain how spending per resident is a fair measure of
this? Isn't spending per _homeless_ resident the relevant measure?

(SF has a much higher homeless rate and we actually spend _less_ per homeless
resident than NYC!)

~~~
smsm42
This: [https://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-
home...](https://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-homeless-
population-in-us/1407123/) says NYC has 887 homeless per 100K, while SF has
795. SF seems to spend about 54K per homeless person, while NYC about 29K, or
54% of SF number.

~~~
abalone
First of all this is a common error. SF spends only about $3.8K per homeless
person.[1] You can't just divide by the homeless population because a huge
portion of the budget goes towards homeless _prevention_. Things like
subsidies to keep people housed. So there are many more people supported by
that budget.

Moreover, you're misunderstanding my question. That's how much SF spends per
_homeless_ resident. Great, in theory that's what we should be comparing with
other cities (calculated correctly of course). But that's not what Collison
did. He just compared how much cities spend _per resident_.. i.e. he took the
homeless budget and divided it by the population of SF, not just the homeless.
You see how that misled and confused you?

It makes no sense to me, except as a trick? Please, somebody explain how this
makes any kind of sense.

[1]
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Businesses-
must-contribute-more-to-city-s-13178743.php)

~~~
smsm42
> First of all this is a common error. SF spends only about $3.8K per homeless
> person.

I addressed that in another comment, it seems to be a sort of a trick, like
those jokes that calculate that only two people work in the whole country by
double-counting a lot of things.

> You see how that misled and confused you?

No, I do not. Combining per resident statistics with homeless/resident ratio -
which is available - it is easy to see spending per homeless. Of course it's
the total spending - then we need to see what the money is actually spent on
and whether it is actually effective for reducing homelessness or just feeding
some people who would wish nothing more but continue getting a paycheck for
"helping homeless", but would not really like the problem to disappear and the
paycheck be gone with it. I am not saying that's a common situation - I don't
know - but this is something that needs to be checked, and the article seems
to just throw out 78% of spending, showing no interest at all about what
happened to it, and then declare "we spend very little on homeless". If that's
true, then where's the rest of the money? What happened to it?

------
malandrew
It's honestly insane to try and solve homelessness in San Francisco because
practically none of the people that are homeless in San Francisco have any
chance of realistically living in San Francisco long term when even young
college-educated people who have their lives together struggle to eke out a
living here.

The best thing that could be done with all this money is to spend it on
providing support in other towns and cities where the cost of living is much
better and the homeless people being helped have an actual chance to get back
on their own two feet and support themselves.

Trying to support homeless people in the city with the most expensive cost of
living in the world is counterproductive and condemns any homeless people
supported here to a lifetime of support.

Furthermore, the money would go a lot further in other places since the cost
of living would be lower and you could pay to have more social workers per
homeless person.

~~~
lacker
I agree - it seems like nobody is really thinking through how to solve
homelessness and is instead arguing about how much money should be allocated
to the same strategy that cannot work.

For currently homeless people with no “special deal” like winning the
affordable housing lottery, it’s just going to be implausible for them to find
housing in San Francisco, as long as someone earning $30,000 a year can’t
afford to live in San Francisco. That means any solution must get people into
housing that is not located in San Francisco.

------
rajeshpant
I completely agree with Stripe here. The homeless problem will not be solved
by increasing taxes. The problem is whether the money is being used correctly.
I see huge issues with that. The department of homelessness currently has an
annual budget of $250Million[1] for providing shelter to homeless. I wonder if
govt. is spending $250 Million every year on providing them shelter why are
they still living in streets? Where is all that money going?

[1] - [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-
incre...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/29-million-increase-for-
San-Francisco-12902707.php)

~~~
erentz
So google tells me there’s around 7,000 homeless in SF. Let’s up that to
10,000. That’s $25,000 per homeless person per year. Am I missing something or
is something very seriously wrong here?

~~~
tomjakubowski
For what it's worth, that's way less than (less than half) the amortized
yearly cost of a California prison inmate: about $70,000.

[https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost](https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost)

~~~
tomjen3
That is the average cost? How much would that be if we looked only at the min-
sec cost?

If it is anything like the institutional system, the people who need dedicated
watchers 24/7 are so, so much more expensive that person like my family
member, who needs only occasional help managing his normal life and doesn't
need anybody to guard him.

------
manfredo
No amount of money can circumvent the pidgeonhole principle. If the city wants
to house all it's residents, then it needs to start by building more housing.
Sure, some homeless need extra services, but if there aren't enough units the
whole effort is moot.

~~~
aeternus
This solution doesn't take into account basic supply & demand though.

There is a significant demand for housing in SF & the bay area. If housing is
provided for free or even below market, demand will come from far & wide.
Barrier-to-entry is basically a bus ticket.

Any real solution needs to at least attempt to balance supply & demand.

~~~
manfredo
The solution isn't too just give away housing for free, it's too remove
government obstruction of housing construction and let the market correct
itself.

~~~
SllX
Every single time someone says this, I want to ask them which obstructions
they would _like_ to see removed, because everyone answers differently.

So let me ask you, which government obstructions would you _like_ to see
removed?

~~~
manfredo
Height restrictions are a big one, as is reducing the ability for
neighborhoods to reject housing construction. Plenty of groups, like Calle 24,
use this in an extortionary manner and block housing unless the developer
makes donations to the group or its affiliates.

~~~
SllX
You and I would probably agree right off the bat on reducing the ability for
neighborhoods to reduce housing construction.

However, I have to ask you about height restrictions. There's height
restrictions because not everyone wants to live next to a skyscraper, which is
well, debatable. I can debate both sides of that.

There's also height restrictions because the bedrock of San Francisco is not
uniform across the city. In many areas of the city, I don't think you even
_can_ build skyscrapers and expect them to remain stable, as we are seeing
with the Millennium Tower and the incomplete dome on the Salesforce Tower.

I could consider reducing height restrictions, certainly, but I don't think
you can eliminate them completely.

~~~
manfredo
I think rent control a is a big reason why this attitude exists. A large
segment of rents (~70% of them) live in rent controlled units, and thus have
no direct incentive to lower rents. In practice, most people probably wouldn't
pay hundreds or thousands of dollars extra per month for a better view. But in
SF, residents are shielded from that sort of tradeoff by rent control, and the
costs of obstructing development are passed off to other people. If residents
actually felt the impact of rising rents, the discussion around development
would be a very different story.

In cities without rent control, like Seattle, development happens a lot
quicker. Over the course of half a decade (2010-2015 IIRC) Seattle added more
than twice the number of housing units as SF. Rent control's perverse system
of incentives leads cities like SF to shoot themselves in the foot.

------
tvanantwerp
Gross receipts taxes are poorly structured taxes. Because they tax all
business transactions throughout the supply chain, they create a pyramiding
effect that penalizes more complex industries, e.g., an aircraft manufacturer
probably gets taxed more than a local dairy. I don't know whether the things
the SF government wants to spend the money on will help with the homelessness
problem or not; but I do think there are better types of taxes to raise that
money.

[https://taxfoundation.org/gross-receipts-tax-impact-san-
fran...](https://taxfoundation.org/gross-receipts-tax-impact-san-francisco/)

------
ljm
> Anyone who claims that Prop C is a matter of being “for the homeless or
> against them” is selling a facile falsehood

Swap 'Prop C' for any other cause, and 'the homeless' for any other intended
benefactor of it, and you get a good formula for how to strip all the nuance
out of a debate and turn it into a battle between opposing sides.

I don't have an opinion on Stripe's position here but that sentence itself is
a pretty eloquent summary for how dumb modern discussion has become in many
circles.

~~~
PascLeRasc
Misleading bill titles are the norm in Congress. See "right-to-work" laws and
the Defense of Marriage Act for examples.

~~~
ErockSteady
> Misleading bill titles are the norm in Congress.

That's how they roll.

> See "right-to-work" laws

I'm guessing you've confused right-to-work with at-will employment. Right-to-
work laws mean that a union can't _force_ you to join and pay dues. "At-will
employment" means you can be fired for any reason or no reason (except if the
reason is they're a member of a "protected class")

------
dawhizkid
I read a tweet from Jack Dorsey that said Square would end up paying a
significantly more than Salesforce (Link:
[https://twitter.com/jack/status/1053312149815091200](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1053312149815091200)).
Why is that? Is it because financial services/payment transaction type
businesses are taxed more or because this is a tax on "gross receipts" which
potentially impacts these payment companies more because it includes income
from interest, which they presumably have relatively more of? Or something
else?

------
simonebrunozzi
Context for non-SF or non-SV people: Prop C is a proposal to increase the
budget dedicated to help homeless people, by taxing gross receipts taxes for
companies with more than $50 million in annual revenue.

Patrick's view is essentially that instead of adding taxes for such companies,
which could potentially impact middle class workers, we should let the current
SF mayor take care of this issue, being in favor of additional taxes to fund
whatever initiative is considered valid.

Now, here's my view. I've been living in SF for six years, I know exactly one
homeless (Charlie), I'm not an expert on poverty or homelessness, but let's
say I've seen my fair share of bad things in the world to at least have an
opinion.

We don't have exact data on how and why people become homeless. We know that
(mostly) they're not born homeless, they become homeless.

I think we should work on the causes. But "we", who? Patrick Collison, Sam
Altman, Marc Benioff, etc, you can pick a trusted, smart serial entrepreneur,
give him a big budget ($100M), and ask him to discover the causes and try to
solve it by measuring how far these $100M go.

~~~
asah
[http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-
Poin...](http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Point-in-
Time-Count-General-FINAL-6.21.17.pdf)

For example, there's a longstanding rumor that the homeless are being "shipped
from out of state" from places like Texas giving free bus tickets. Here's the
messier statistics:

"Sixty-nine percent (69%) of respondents reported they were living in San
Francisco at the time they most recently became homeless. Of those, over half
(55%) had lived in San Francisco for 10 or more years. Eight percent (8%) had
lived in San Francisco for less than one year. This is similar to the survey
findings in 2015. Ten percent (10%) of respondents reported that they were
living out of state at the time they became homeless. Twenty-one percent (21%)
reported they were living in another county in California. California counties
that respondents reported living in at the time they most recently became
homeless include Alameda County (5%), San Mateo (4%), Contra Costa (3%), Marin
(3%), Santa Clara County (1%), and some other California county (5%)."

learn more:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=sf+homeless+population+repor...](https://www.google.com/search?q=sf+homeless+population+report)

~~~
1024core
> Sixty-nine percent (69%) of respondents reported they were living in San
> Francisco at the time they most recently became homeless.

I am _so tired_ of reading this bullshit "statistic". It is a self-reported
number. If a homeless person thinks it benefits him to say so, he will. And
homeless people will say anything to survive, as they are barely surviving.

If you came where from Podunk, MN and crashed on your buddy's couch last year
before he kicked you out? Congratulations, you were "living in SF before you
became homeless".

If you came here from somewhere else and stayed in a shelter for a day before
you got evicted? Congratulations, you were "living in SF before you became
homeless".

If the question was, "were you a rent-paying resident of SF before you became
homeless", the answer would be totally different.

There are 76 non-profits that feed from the trough of homelessness[1]. Don't
they have admin overhead? How much money is wasted on this overhead?

[1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-
recor...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-
record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php)

~~~
thaumasiotes
To be fair, "Of those, over half (55%) had lived in San Francisco for 10 or
more years" is much harder to game, though just as easy to lie about.

I'm more worried about this thought in the article:

> While cities report inconsistently, San Francisco currently spends around
> $430 per city resident per year on services and programs for the homeless,
> compared to $260 in New York and $110 in Los Angeles. Yet the problem in our
> city is worse, and despite increases in spending, has continued to worsen.

It's not a _surprise_ that the city with more spending on services for the
homeless has more homeless. That's exactly what you'd expect under pretty much
any model.

Do you believe that subsidizing the homeless means you'll get more homeless?
Then higher spending will directly cause more homelessness.

Do you believe that places with bigger problems will try harder to do
something about them? Then higher spending will reflect more homelessness.

~~~
wilg
I wonder what the numbers look like per _homeless_ person in the city.

------
istjohn
What a bunch of double-speak. You have a city with conditions on the streets
compared to those of the world's poorest slums. Clearly, a dramatic increase
in resources needs to be brought to bear on the problem. Any plan Mayor Breed
might have will only be aided by additional funding. Patrick Collision's plea
for subtlety is a thin disguise for his apathy.

Tech companies like his--btw Stripe benefited from San Francisco tax breaks
and the change from an income tax to a gross receipt tax in the mid-aughts--
need to step up and give back to the cities that enabled them to become what
they are today. And they should be more willing to take responsibility for the
consequences good and bad of the tech boom.

~~~
orangecat
_Clearly, a dramatic increase in resources needs to be brought to bear on the
problem._

Something must be done. This is something.

 _Any plan Mayor Breed might have will only be aided by additional funding._

Drug abuse is a serious problem. Giving the DEA more money will only help to
solve it.

------
zjaffee
The issue of homelessness in SF is absolutely related to affordable housing
and a lack of beds, the comparison NYC and LA are absolutely abysmal in that
NYC has huge amounts of permanently affordable housing that it can use to
house homeless people in that has a relatively low cost to maintain compared
to having to acquire new land and build new buildings, and LA, which has an
incredibly high street homeless population in the same way SF does.

Additionally, the total cost of homeless services is helping more people than
the 7,500 that are let mentioned as it's really closer to 20,000 where many
are in permanent supportive housing and aren't considered homeless but would
be without the same type of support.

If you look at the cost per person when using the 20,000 number, the cost is
still far lower than what it costs to keep a person in prison each year, where
with the passing of Prop C, that number would get closer to said amount. Add
on the fact that SF is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the
would (where there isn't cheaper housing anywhere nearby), with a related high
cost of labor, and the spending makes far more sense.

------
tareqak
It seems like there was a financial aspect to it after all:

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Dorsey-
tweetsto...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Dorsey-tweetstorm-
bashes-Prop-C-SF-measure-to-13321053.php)

From SFChronicle article:

Dorsey estimated that Square could pay an additional $20 million in taxes
under Prop. C next year, while Benioff has said Salesforce would pay an
additional $10 million, despite its larger size.

“Taxes would grow at rates multiple times our (adjusted) revenue, which no
company can sustain,” Dorsey said in a tweet. “Not an issue for
Salesforce/Twitter, but unfair to (Square) and (financial) startups.”

------
LiterallyDoge
What about the argument that some places are more expensive than others, and
sometimes, for a few years, it makes more sense to live in a cheap place while
you set up your finances, and then make decisions about where to live for the
long term?

~~~
pcwalton
Doreen Michele's comment answers this quite well:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17915009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17915009)

~~~
cco
We need to first make sure we're all talking about the same problem. When
people complain about the homeless of San Francisco it is not the people
Doreen is taking about.

The people in question are severely mentally ill, addicts, likely both. They
are the people that shoot heroin at the bus stop you are trying to wait at,
they're the guy with no shoes, covered in his own waste screaming at passers-
by. These are the people that are causing the frustration, not people who
could make it if they could level up their skillset and get a better job.

We really need to agree on the issue at hand because so often I see people
talk straight past each other. The man covered in his waste needs help,
desperately, he will not be someone who with a little help starts paying rent
and holding down a job. He needs the community to pay for housing, medical
treatment, and psychiatric care for a long time, likely forever to some
degree. But we can't keep talking about different problems.

------
fillskills
"Today, the world is pulling us towards polarized discourse and emotionally-
charged, soundbite analysis. We’re all familiar with the forces at play. We
think this is important to resist." \- PC for President!

~~~
fillskills
On a serious note there seems to be many sub issues like PC mentioned. On the
top of my head: 1 - lack of homes 2 - speed of population migration is higher
than planned 3 - increase in price of property is higher than planned 4 -
increase in labor cost 5 - fund mismatch between different localities etc 6 -
funding changes from Fed and from the Mayor's article there seem to be a lot
more. The issue needs a Product like approach of finding all the requirements
and fighting it from different directions. Adding funding would certainly help
temporarily but not a good long term solution.

------
pj_mukh
"San Francisco currently spends around $430 per city resident per year on
services and programs for the homeless, compared to $260 in New York and $110
in Los Angeles"

Anyone know why this discrepancy exists? I know this includes rental
assistance for those "at risk" of becoming homeless (but not necessarily
homeless), so the value, when calculated "per homeless" resident, is
meaningless.

However, this calculation "per city resident" in general seems to point at
some deep infrastructural issues. I'm trying to find an analysis as to why and
coming up empty.

~~~
HuShifang
Prima facie this strikes me as an apples-to-oranges comparison. New York and
Los Angeles are large cities with millions of residents and dominate their
geographical areas (LA perhaps less than New York, but still). San Francisco
has something like 884,000 residents, which makes it the second largest city
in the Bay Area (after San Jose, with 1,035,000 or so), which has something
like 8.7 million residents if you go by Combined Statistical Area (CSA)
definition, which makes intuitive sense to me having lived here. By comparison
New York has 8.6 million out of 24 million for its CSA; LA has 4 million out
of 18.7 million for its CSA.

So really, a more meaningful comparison (if one is resigned to handwaving
about tax bases, without delving into details of city finances) for SF would
be Boston, with 865,000 people out of 8.2 million for its CSA.

~~~
pj_mukh
AFAIK, homeless problem scales with population size. So if you divide by
population size (which those values do), the value should stay roughly the
same.

What are the factors that make this untrue?

~~~
aeternus
Cost of housing is a big one. Low housing costs and plenty of space available
make the homeless problem both less likely and easier to deal with.

~~~
mturmon
Yep, there are plenty of outlying areas in LA that are still not expensive in
the same way SF is - LA is just much, much bigger. So you can hang on with
significantly less money. Still, it's an interesting question.

------
gumby
BTW most shelters are pretty scary and many people feel safer on the street
than in them.

------
rayiner
> Anyone who claims that Prop C is a matter of being “for the homeless or
> against them” is selling a facile falsehood. While well-intentioned, it is
> San Francisco’s largest-ever tax increase, and comes with no systemic
> changes or effective accountability.

In San Francisco, you must be numb to that kind of logical fallacy by now.
This sounds like 95% of all entreaties to spend more government money.

------
inetknght
Solve homelessness in SF by solving the outrageous price of housing.

~~~
asah
um, many of these people are mentally ill, physically ill and/or addicted to
drugs: they need a lot more than just housing.

(I live a few blocks from the worst areas and see people dealing drugs and
shooting up _every_ day)

~~~
J5892
Correlation does not imply causation.

Physical illness and drug addiction (and even mental illness in some cases)
are more likely a symptom of homelessness than a cause.

From accounts I've heard from homeless people, one of the biggest problems
homeless people have is boredom. This leads to both depression and drug use,
both of which can lead to both physical and mental illness.

~~~
cgriswald
In fairness to all in this thread, I think the failure to define "solving
homelessness" is causing some miscommunication.

The OP seems to be discussing the problem of solving it in a global sense, so
that people do not _become_ homeless. IMO, more housing is the solution to
that problem.

The GP seems to be discussing the problem of solving it in terms of the
existing homeless population, which, regardless of causation or the
directionality of any causation, does require dealing with the mental illness
and drug abuse issues.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The OP seems to be discussing the problem of solving it in a global sense,
> so that people do not become homeless. IMO, more housing is the solution to
> that problem.

IMO, it's not, because people don't become homeless (for the most part)
because there are no existing vacant housing units, they become homeless
because of joblessness, poor credit, drug addiction, mental illness, and
criminal issues (often involving drugs), or a combination thereof, which make
them unable (financially or otherwise) to either rent housing in the open
market or take advantage of publicly operated or subsidized housing.

~~~
cgriswald
No, those are largely myths and where they are true are in places without
large homeless populations. We are talking about homelessness in San Francisco
which is primarily caused by zoning issues, gentrification, and similar
issues.

> ... which make them unable (financially or otherwise) to either rent housing
> in the open market or take advantage of publicly operated or subsidized
> housing.

This is made easier when there is more housing available.

------
dawhizkid
My biggest criticism with Stripe and Square's response is that Jack Dorsey
admitted over Twitter today that a major reason both companies officially
oppose Prop C is because it disproportionately impacts payment companies since
they would be effectively "double taxed" since by definition a tax on "gross
receipts" would be a tax on the entire transaction amount once and on the
~2.9% transaction fee again.

Jack Dorsey's tweet on this "unfairness" today was the very first time I heard
that as part of their argument against this tax. Why not explicitly say that
up front long ago instead of hiding behind the singular argument that "we just
support the mayor's judgement on the issue?" Seems disingenuous.

~~~
abalone
_> they would be effectively "double taxed" since by definition a tax on
"gross receipts" would be a tax on the entire transaction amount once and on
the ~2.9% transaction fee again._

Citation please? Dorsey said they’d be taxed more than Salesforce but I
assumed that’s because of where geographically they book their revenue.

~~~
dawhizkid
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Dorsey-
tweetsto...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Dorsey-tweetstorm-
bashes-Prop-C-SF-measure-to-13321053.php)

 _Square has said that a quirk of the proposed tax could harm it and other San
Francisco payments companies like Stripe. Gross receipts taxes are applied to
a company’s total revenue generated from business activities in the city. In
Square’s case, those include fees it splits with banks and Visa and MasterCard
when it processes credit-card transactions.

Square, which is publicly traded, reports both net revenue, which includes
those fees, and adjusted revenue, which excludes them. In the second quarter,
those figures were $815 million and $385 million respectively. In Square’s
view, imposing a tax on the higher revenue measure hurts it
disproportionately. _

If I'm reading this correctly, basically payment companies like Square and
Stripe are disproportionately hurt because they would pay the tax on the ~2.9%
+ 10 cent fee they collect even though in reality both companies only keep a
small fraction of that fee since most of that fee goes to the networks like
Visa/MC/Amex.

~~~
abalone
Yes.. earlier you said the entire transaction amount and a double tax. That’s
probably not accurate.

As for adjusted revenue, do we actually know for certain that gross receipts
applies to net revenue and not adjusted? Or is Dorsey just “hypothetically”
spreading FUD?

~~~
dawhizkid
They are essentially paying a tax on behalf of Visa/MC/Amex (none of which are
HQ'd in SF). It's actual more than a "double tax" since more than 50% of the
processing fee is split with them but not a literal "double tax" imposed by
SF.

Gross receipts is _all_ revenue not including any cost or expense
[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gross-
receipts.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gross-receipts.asp)

------
thrownawayacct
In my early teens I was homeless for roughly 6 years and I think this article
is largely junk. The mental illness reasoning for homelessness isn't really
true, its that being homeless and having no one there and nothing to help you
makes mental issues, its a slide that keeps you down with horrible sadness and
despair. What needs to happen is having safety nets before people hit the
slide. Of course there are many different reasons for homelessness but
preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place is the issue that
needs to addressed, no one deserves the lifelong scars.

If stripe really wanted to help then it could have created some safety nets
with money it used to lobby.

------
User23
Spending more on something is a good way to get more of it when exporters are
ready and willing to meet the demand. Municipalities buying their local
homeless bus tickets is just one example. If we want to reduce homelessness,
we need a smarter approach than giving people goods and services for being
homeless. I don't have all the answers here, but I do know that this requires
both positive and negative incentives. A carrot and stick approach if you
will. Sad to say, most vagrants are not capable of acting in their own
rational self-interest, so simply extolling the virtues of becoming a
productive member of society just isn't going to cut it.

------
claydavisss
If I was his PR man I would have advised against writing this at all. No one
expects Stripe to solve a major social ill and frankly beyond one blip
attention post on HN, no one cares what PC thinks of Prop C... there is
nothing to be gained from this no matter what side of the issue you are on.
This post will be red meat for critics and damage Stripe's good cred for no
gain.

------
smsm42
Something I am missing here. At the beginning they say spending and the luck
of money is not a problem (and with 54K per year per homeless person it sounds
plausible) and then at the end they claim the solution would necessarily mean
higher taxes. That makes no sense - if money is not the issue, why you'd need
higher taxes?

------
jwalstrom
If anyone wants some domains for this cause I am more than happy to donate:
[http://www.ballotdomains.com](http://www.ballotdomains.com)

------
abalone
Hold on... This strikes me as disingenuous and here's why. Stripe is using
spend-per-resident to compare SF to other cities, to lead us to the conclusion
that we already spend more than anyone and so more wouldn't help.

But SF has one of the highest homeless rates in the nation. It's spend per
_homeless_ resident that is the relevant comparison.

So how do we do on that? As others have noted, we actually spend _less_ per
homeless resident than NYC. You would never get that from reading this! All
you see is NYC: $260, SF: $770. Totally misleading! It comes across as
disingenuous to me because, clearly, Stripe must know this.

~~~
mmanfrin
This is a tax bill, using cost-per-resident is not disingenuous.

~~~
abalone
It is is you're trying to compare the effectiveness of spending money ("If
homelessness was just a question of money, this issue would already be
solved.") The relevant compare is cost-per-homeless-resident. We actually
trail cited cities on that. How is Stripe's argument not misleading?

------
glibgil
So it's about the money

~~~
daxorid
When a business with a fiduciary duty to its shareholders takes a political
stance, it _always_ is.

~~~
glibgil
I'm confused. Why aren't Salesforce shareholders making that company oppose
Prop C?

------
coolboy93290
tl;dr;

"Look. We are just trying to exit with a billion dollars like everyone else in
SF. We don't want to walk over the homeless either, but, it is super expensive
to help them. So we propose just ignoring it until we get paid. Vote no on
prop C!"

-Stripe

------
mdgrech23
In the future prop C may be viewed as a step towards basic income.

------
jack_jennings
Glad to hear something will happen in collaboration with the Mayor's office,
at some point in the future. Until that point, pass Prop C and propose a
repeal whenever you all come up with the plan that's so much better.

------
antoineMoPa
My distant observation is that the high risk mindset that allows companies
like Stripe and many others in your area to succeed is the same that brings
people to the streets. I imagine many successful founders are homeless in many
parallel universes.

~~~
muhneesh
I don't think educated software engineers that decide to take a calculated
risk are the ones becoming homeless.

It's a drug and mental health issue, unless you are speaking to a broader
philosophical point on what "high risk" means.

------
minimaxir
More context: Jack Dorsey (on behalf of Square) explicitly called out Stripe
this morning over the issue:
[https://twitter.com/jack/status/1053312141657178112](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1053312141657178112)

EDIT: I misinterpreted the thread: see comments below. Although Stripe's
response was likely correlated to it.

~~~
peacetreefrog
To me, it looks like he's doing the exact opposite and is agreeing with
Stripe.

"Companies like Square and Stripe would be taxed at a significantly larger
total contribution than much larger companies like Salesforce."

------
thrownaway1234
On a flip side, in developing countries, there aren't that many homelesses
because, sadly, we don't think about them as equal.

They wouldn't be allowed to hang out along the streets like what happens in
US. They will get picked up and will be forced to move and etc. We usually
have a place called Slum for extremely poor people. They will need to make a
living themselves. If they don't, I'm not sure where they end up (death,
maybe).

Japan also doesn't think much about homeless people
([https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/12/30/yaku...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/12/30/yakuza-
gangsters-recruit-homeless-men-for-fukushima-nuclear-clean-up/))

