How Much General Fund Money In San Francisco Goes To Pay For Homeless Services

Proffer C Court Win Delivers Nearly $500 Million for San Francisco's Homeless. But How Will it Be Spent?

Sep 12, 2020

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Tents line a gravel sidewalk off Fulton Street most City Hall on May 5, 2020. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

San Francisco has $492 million burning a pigsty in its pocket, and it'due south most to spend it all on helping the homeless.

That's the amount the city has nerveless so far in revenue enhancement dollars from Proposition C, which San Francisco voters approved in 2018. Authored past the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, the mensurate raised taxes on businesses in the city making more than than $50 million annually in gross receipts to provide additional funding for homeless services, specially mental health needs.

Whatsoever number of homeless programs may be funded by these dollars, including a new mental health crisis squad to respond to not-tearing altercations involving unhoused populations, replacing what has traditionally been a law enforcement response.

Programs that offer rental assistance for people on the brink of homelessness, RV sites for those sleeping in vehicles and outdoor "safe sleeping sites" for occupants of tent encampments may too receive much-needed funding.

Just although Suggestion C passed nearly two years ago, San Francisco hasn't been able to spend a dime of the money nerveless until just this week.

That's because of a legal challenge mounted in Apr 2019 that halted spending, forcing city officials to sock away the greenbacks, while waiting, purse strings in mitt, for a court decision to come downwards.

The legal morass evaporated Wednesday when the California Supreme Courtroom declined to take an appeal from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which had sued, unsuccessfully, to block the measure, arguing that San Francisco needed a ii-thirds bulk to pass the tax.

San Francisco is now costless to spend that $492 meg in taxes already collected from the measure, and is expected to continue collecting, on average, about $300 million annually from it.

So where will the city spend their millions? And who will ultimately brand that conclusion?

The answer is both simple and complicated: The measure states that the funding must be used for certain objectives, similar mental wellness aid and shelter beds, but determining which specific services should receive funding under those broad umbrellas is a wholly unlike matter, 1 that three distinct entities will have to wrestle over: San Francisco Mayor London Breed, the Board of Supervisors, and a Proffer C oversight committee, whose first meeting is scheduled for Sept. 16.

Paying the Piper

The first big spend for Proposition C won't be to buy new shelter beds or fund new homelessness programs — instead, it will be to pay dorsumthe urban center, which has been spending its own money on those things.

Roughly $196 1000000 volition repay San Francisco'southward general fund, and other funds, for affordable housing costs spent as part of the mayor's Homeless Recovery Program, which proposes i,000 new permanent supportive housing units every bit part of this year'due south budget and 500 more units next year.

Big-Budget Programme

Breed's proposed spending programme for the remainder of the Proposition C funds will go before the Board of Supervisors for discussion this week, with votes for final approval anticipated in late September. Breed must sign the budget by Oct. ane.

Brood's proposal includes funding for the following categories:

Homelessness prevention ($59 one thousand thousand): While the specifics of this spending have still to exist determined, usually this category of spending includes brusque- and medium-term rental assistance for people who are housed but could shortly get homeless. This category also includes the urban center's Rapid Rehousing program, which provides housing to people who accept recently been evicted.
Shelter and hygiene ($39.4 million): Funding for "vehicle triage centers" — essentially parking sites for homeless people living in RV's and cars, with wraparound social services; "safe sleeping sites," which are outdoor tent encampments with city-provided social services; and new emergency shelters.
Mental health ($98.iv million): Funding for the newly formed Street Crunch Response Team pilot program — with teams responding to 311 and 911 calls instead of police; the city's Behavioral Health Access Center; new beds for those with mental health needs and additional funding for the Mental Wellness SF plan.

"This will let us to move forward quickly to implement units for people on the streets," said Jeff Cretan, the mayor'south spokesperson. "Information technology's really nigh providing more housing and shelter, and mental health support for those who badly demand it. This court decision really frees up the money to implement the programs more speedily."

Homelessness Meets COVID-19

Although Breed and the Board of Supervisors have largely hammered out plans for the Proposition C funding, the oversight committee mandated by the mensurate hasn't even met however.

And that's a problem, says Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, the measure out's author. She'due south also an appointee to the oversight commission, which has four seats nominated past the Board of Supervisors, four seats nominated past the mayor and 1 seat nominated by the city controller.

"Basically, what (Breed'southward) got in in that location, she's paying back expenditures that already happened that had no community oversight," Friedenbach said. "It's a full setup. Because it creates a hole in the budget if you don't utilise that funding."

Friedenbach argues that some of the programs Breed wants to fund with Proposition C coin already take other dedicated funding sources, ones that homeless advocates have fought hard for. That includes rental subsidies, which were a "upkeep boxing we establish the revenue for, got the funding for," Friedenbach said.

The mayor'southward office pushed back on those claims, and said the budget procedure was public, with open negotiations betwixt the mayor's office and the Board of Supervisors allowing plenty of time for input.

And while much of the money from the measure out has already been earmarked, Friedenbach argues that the realities of COVID-19 have re-shifted priorities for homeless providers. Additional funding, she says, is at present urgently needed to create additional safe sleeping sites, buying hotel rooms and increasing rental assistance to keep more tenants at risk of eviction from losing their houses.

"In that location's a expert chunk of people who might need help during this pandemic and become homeless otherwise," she said.

Friedenbach says the mayor and homeless advocates are still very much at odds on how much of Proposition C funding should be spent, and she hopes the two sides can reach some kind of agreement when the oversight commission convenes next week.

"The initiative passed, and she needs to respect that it's a people's initiative with people's oversight," she said.

Source: https://www.kqed.org/news/11837613/proposition-c-court-win-delivers-nearly-500-million-for-san-franciscos-homeless-but-how-will-it-be-spent

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