No on Proposition C
More red tape around homeless services
What is it?
Proposition C is a Charter Amendment introduced by the Board of Supervisors which will create a new Homelessness Oversight Commission that would be tasked with overseeing the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
Fiscal impacts
There would be little to no fiscal impact because commissions are largely unpaid and take little active investment from the City. The total cost to taxpayers would be around $350,000 per year in direct costs.
Why is this on the ballot?
This is a City Charter amendment. All charter amendments must be approved by a 50% + 1 majority.
- Sponsor: Supervisor Ahsha Safaí
- Co-Sponsors: Supervisors Shamann Walton, Aaron Peskin, Rafael Mandelman, Gordon Mar, and Catherine Stefani
- Placed on ballot by: Unanimously by all Supervisors
Why vote No?
There are two simple reasons to vote no:
- Commissions let elected officials escape accountability by passing crucial oversight responsibility to unelected people (who are almost always politically connected via donations or other means) who lack the authority or expertise to actually fix anything.
- This commission has every seat but one set aside for people who work in the homelessness industry. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (DHSH) is now spending nearly $1 billion per year on homelessness services and desperately needs an audit. But the people getting paid those massive sums for such poor outcomes are the people least qualified to do the audit.
If you want a longer explanation, keep reading:
There are already several agencies, nonprofits, and boards & commissions covering homelessness. Will having yet another commission somehow yield better results? GrowSF believes that critical city departments need a single executive who can be held accountable for poor performance, and passing the buck to a bunch of different unelected bodies means that voters have no one to fire when we aren't getting the services we deserve.
A huge red flag is that the requirements for Commissioners aren't largely focused on experience with overseeing agencies, managing budgets, or running audits. In fact only 1 of 7 Commissioners is required to have that kind of experience.
None of the other mandatory requirements will result in good governance, fiscal responsibility, or good outcomes for our homeless residents. What will happen, instead, is that the existing nonprofits who get paid by the city to run our poor services will get appointed to the commission and guarantee that their nonprofits keep getting paid, regardless of the quality of service. This is regulatory capture, pure and simple.
In politics, regulatory capture is a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, such as a particular geographic area, industry, profession, or ideological group.
When regulatory capture occurs, a special interest is prioritized over the general interests of the public, leading to a net loss for society.