San Francisco to vote on taxing rich businesses for homeless

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San Francisco to vote on taxing rich businesses for homeless

2018-10-15 12:23 Last Updated At：12:50

San Francisco has come to be known around the world as a place for aggressive panhandling, open-air drug use and sprawling tent camps, the dirt and despair all the more remarkable for the city's immense wealth.

Some streets are so filthy that officials launched a special "poop patrol," and a young tech worker created "Snapcrap" — an app to report the filth. Morning commuters walk briskly past homeless people huddled against subway walls. In the city's squalid downtown sector, the frail and sick shuffle along in wheelchairs or stumble around, sometimes half-clothed.

The situation has become so dire that a coalition of activists collected enough signatures to put a measure on the city's Nov. 6 ballot. Proposition C would tax hundreds of San Francisco's wealthiest companies to help thousands of homeless and mentally ill residents, an effort that failed earlier this year in Seattle. San Francisco's measure is expected to raise $300 million a year, nearly doubling what the city already spends.

"This is the worst it's ever been," says Marc Benioff, founder of cloud-computing giant Salesforce and a fourth-generation San Franciscan, who is supporting the measure even though his company would pay an additional $10 million a year if it passes. "Nobody should have to live like this. They don't need to live like this. We can get this under control."

"We have to do it. We have to try something," said Sunshine Powers, who owns a tie-dye boutique, Love on Haight, in the city's historic Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. "If my community is bad, nobody is going to want to come here."

The proposition is the latest battle between big business and social services advocates who demand that corporate America pay to solve inequities exacerbated by its success. In San Francisco, it's also become an intriguing fight between recently elected Mayor London Breed, who is siding with the city's Chamber of Commerce in urging a no vote, and philanthropist Benioff, whose company is San Francisco's largest private employer with 8,400 workers.

Breed came out hard against the measure, saying it lacked collaboration, could attract homeless people from neighboring counties, and could cost middle-class jobs in retail and service. The city has already dramatically increased spending on homelessness, she said, with no noticeable improvement.

San Francisco spent $380 million of its $10 billion budget last year on services related to homelessness.

"I have to make decisions with my head, not just my heart," Breed said. "I do not believe doubling what we spend on homelessness without new accountability, when we don't even spend what we have now efficiently, is good government."

Cities along the West Coast are grappling with rampant homelessness, driven in part by growing numbers of well-paying tech jobs that price lower-income residents out of tight housing markets. A family of four in San Francisco earning $117,000 is considered low-income.

Business prevailed in Seattle, when leaders in June repealed a per-employee tax that would have raised $50 million a year, after Amazon and Starbucks pushed back. In July, the city council of Cupertino in Silicon Valley scuttled a similar head tax after opposition from its largest employer, Apple Inc.

Mountain View residents, however, will vote this fall on a per-employee tax expected to raise $6 million a year, largely from Google, for transit projects.

The San Francisco measure is different in that it would levy the tax mostly by revenue rather than by number of employees — an average half-percent tax increase on companies' revenue above $50 million each year. It was also put on the ballot by citizens, not elected officials.

Online payment processing company Stripe has voiced opposition and contributed $120,000 to the campaign against Proposition C, but other companies have stayed quiet. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, whose board includes representatives of Microsoft, LinkedIn and Oracle, is leading the fight.

Up to 400 businesses would be affected, with internet and financial services sectors bearing nearly half the cost.

The city says confidentiality precludes revealing tax information, but some of the companies expected to pay the most are big names across major industries. Wells Fargo & Co., retailer Gap Inc. and ride-hailing platform Uber declined to comment.

Pharmaceutical distributor McKesson Corp. referred questions to a private-sector trade association, the Committee on Jobs, which called the measure flawed. Utility Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. said it has not taken a position. Twitter declined to comment, but chief executive Jack Dorsey said via tweet last week that he trusts Breed to fix the problem.

"Anyone can take a look at the status quo and understand it's not working, but more money alone is not the sole answer," says Jess Montejano, spokesman for the "No on C" campaign.

Benioff disagrees. A $37 million two-year initiative he helped start with the city and to which he contributed more than $11 million has housed nearly 400 families through rent subsidies, he said.

Benioff has pledged at least $2 million from company and personal resources for the November tax campaign. He said he was ultimately swayed by a report from the city's chief economist, which found the measure would likely reduce homelessness while resulting in a net loss of 900 jobs at most, or 0.1 percent of all jobs.

"I said, 'Well, I'm the largest employer in the city, and the city is in decline from homelessness and cleanliness. We have to take action now,' " he said.

At least half of the new revenue would go toward permanent housing, and at least a quarter to services for people with severe behavioral issues. A 2017 one-night count found an estimated 7,500 people without permanent shelter in San Francisco. More than half had lived in the city for at least a decade.

Tracey Mixon and her daughter, Maliya, 8, are among the hidden homeless.

Mixon, 47, a San Francisco native, lives and works in the notoriously dangerous and drug-infested Tenderloin neighborhood. They were forced out of their rental this summer, partly because the company that managed her property lost its federal accreditation, she said on a recent afternoon while working a crossing guard shift.

One of the hardest parts was finding a place to go for the day when mother and daughter were kicked out of an overnight-only emergency shelter.

"I have to shield her from people that are using drugs," she said. "I have to shield her from people who might be fighting."

Hanging out on Haight, the street that played a central role in the "Summer of Love," Stormy Nichole Day, 22, says she would love a place to live. Currently, Day is sleeping in a doorway. She could thrive if her basic needs were met, she said.

"And that includes a house, and a place to cook food and a place to take a shower."

Venice tests a 5-euro entry fee for day-trippers as the Italian city grapples with overtourism

2024-04-26 03:49 Last Updated At：03:50

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Under the gaze of the world’s media, the fragile lagoon city of Venice launched a pilot program Thursday to charge day-trippers a 5-euro ($5.35) entry fee that authorities hope will discourage visitors from arriving on peak days and make the city more livable for its dwindling residents.

Visitors arriving at Venice's main train station were greeted with large signs listing the 29 dates through July of the plan's test phase that also designated separate entrances for tourists, and residents, students and workers.

“We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,’’ said Simone Venturini, the city’s top tourism official. “We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days.”

Not all residents, however, are persuaded of the efficacy of the new system in dissuading mass tourism, insisting that only a resurgence in the population will restore balance to a city where narrow alleyways and water buses are often clogged with tourists.

Hundreds of Venetians protested against the program, marching festively though the city's main bus terminal behind banners reading “No to Tickets, Yes to Services and Housing.” Protesters scuffled briefly with police with riot gear who blocked them from entering the city, before changing course and entering over another bridge escorted by plainclothes police officers. The demonstration wrapped up peacefully in a piazza.

Tourists arriving at the main station encountered almost as many journalists as stewards on hand to politely guide anyone unaware of the new requirements through the process of downloading the QR code to pay the fee.

Arianna Cecilia, a tourist from Rome visiting Venice for the first time, said she thought it was “strange” to have to pay to enter a city in her native country, and be funneled through separate entrance ways for tourists. She and her boyfriend were staying in nearby Treviso, and so downloaded the QR code as required. But she was still caught off-guard while soaking in her first view ever of Venice's canals by the sight of the entrance signs and her boyfriend telling her to get out the ticket.

On the other side of the entrance ways, workers in yellow vests carried out random checks at the train station. Transgressors face fines of 50 to 300 euros ($53 to $320), but officials said “common sense” was being applied for the launch.

The requirement applies only for people arriving between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Outside of those hours, access is free and unchecked.

Venice has long suffered under the pressure of overtourism, and officials hope that the pilot project can help provide more exact figures to better manage the phenomenon.

The city can track the number of hotel visitors, which last year numbered 4.6 million and is down 16% from pre-pandemic highs. But the number of day visitors, which make up the majority of the crowds in Venice, could only be estimated until recently.

A Smart Control Room set up during the pandemic has been tracking arrivals from cellphone data, roughly confirming pre-pandemic estimates of 25 million to 30 million arrivals a year, said Michele Zuin, the city’s top economic official. That includes both day-trippers and overnight guests.

But Zuin said the data is incomplete.

“It’s clear we will get more reliable data from the contribution” being paid by day-trippers, he said.

Venturini said the city is strained when the number of day-trippers reaches 30,000 to 40,000. On peak days, local police set up one-way traffic for pedestrians to keep the crowds moving.

Residents opposing the day-tripper tax insist that the solution to Venice's woes are to boost the resident population and the services they need, limiting short-term rentals to make available more housing and attract families back from the mainland.

Last year, Venice passed a telling milestone when the number of tourist beds exceeded for the first time the number of official residents, which is now below 50,000 in the historic center with its picturesque canals.

“Putting a ticket to enter a city will not decrease not even by one single unit the number of visitors that are coming,’’ said Tommaso Cacciari, an activist who organized a protest Thursday against the measure.

“You pay a ticket to take the metro, to go to a museum, an amusement park. You don’t pay a ticket to enter a city. This is the last symbolic step of a project of an idea of this municipal administration to kick residents out of Venice,” he said.

Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro declared the launch day, coinciding with an Italian holiday, a success, registering 15,700 paying visitors, 50% more than anticipated.

More than 97,000 others had downloaded a QR code denoting an exemption, including to work in Venice or as a resident of the Veneto region. Hotels in Venice, including in mainland districts like Marghera or Mestre, provided a QR code for visitors to attest to their stay, which includes a hotel tax — accounting for 40,000 of those.

Venturini, the tourist official, said that interest in Venice’s pilot program has been keen from other places suffering from mass tourism, including other Italian art cities, and municipalities abroad such as Barcelona, Spain, and Amsterdam.

But Marina Rodino, who has lived in Venice for 30 years, doesn't see the fee as the cure-all. Neighboring apartments in her residential building near the famed Rialto Bridge once inhabited by families are now short-term apartment rentals.

The corner butcher shop closed. Yet she noted that the new entrance fee requirement will still allow young people to flood the city in the evening for the traditional aperitivo, which can grow rowdy.

She was passing out mock European Union passports for “Venice, Open City,” underlining the irony of the new system, and challenging its legal standing with citations from the Italian Constitution guaranteeing its citizens the right to “move or reside freely in any part of the national territory."

“This is not a natural oasis. This is not a museum. It is not Pompeii. It is a city, where we need to fight so the houses are inhabited by families, and stores reopen. That is what would counter this wild tourism,’’ Rodino said.