1. San Francisco: In 2018 San Francisco voters, in a city of about 883,000 at the time, passed Proposition C that imposes a 0.5% tax on business revenues above $50 million. This has yielded and will continue to yield at least $300 million per year into the future and is dedicated to expanding affordable housing (https://missionlocal.org/2020/06/court-of-appeal-sides-with-san-francisco-on-prop-c-city-on-cusp-of-unlocking-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars-for-homeless-services/; https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2020/07/01/court-upholds-s-f-s-prop-c-homelessness-funds.html; https://missionlocal.org/2020/09/prop-c-supreme-court/). This initiative is paid for by large corporations exclusively with no additional burden on taxpayers. Neither small businesses nor households are taxed and, because there is no borrowing in the capital markets, there are no interest payments, commissions or fees paid to the wealthy lenders.

There were an estimated 7,500 unhoused people in San Francisco in 2017, the year before Proposition C was passed (https://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/2018-state-of-homelessness/). On a per capita basis, an average of $300 million per year sums to $40,000 in potential expenditures per unhoused person in 2017.

2. Portland: In May 2020, the voters of metro-Portland, an area with 1.83 million people in three counties, approved Measure 26-210, a ballot initiative that imposed a 1% tax on income above $125,000 per year for individuals and over $200,000 for couples plus a 1% tax on profits from businesses with gross receipts greater than $5 million per year. These strongly progressive taxes are expected to bring in approximately $250 million per year in additional revenues for programs for the houseless, even though an estimated 90% of residents and 94% of businesses are exempt from the new tax. The taxes were set to begin in 2021 and to expire in 2030 (see https://ballotpedia.org/Portland_Metro,_Oregon,_Measure_26-210,_Income_and_Business_Taxes_for_Homeless_Services_(May_2020); https://www.seattlepi.com/ local/politics/article/Portland-area-voters-approve-taxing-the-rich-to-15283824.php).

As in the case of San Francisco, such progressive taxes do not involve any borrowing or underwriting costs. There were about 5,700 houseless people in the Metro-Portland region in 2019, the year before the new income and profits taxes ballot initiative was passed. This yields about $43,859 in potential spending per houseless person in the region in 2019 and similar sums for a ten-year period (https://cityobservatory.org/equity-and-homelessness/).

3. Seattle: In July 2020 voters passed a progressively structured payroll tax on businesses with more than $7 million in annual payroll outlays, a tax expected to yield some $240 million annually to address houselessness. Distributed among an estimated 7,800 houseless persons in Seattle in 2019, that amounts to $30,781 in potential per person initial year housing assistance (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/07/seattle-passes-payroll-tax-targeting-amazon-and-other-big-businesses.html; http://seattle.legistar.com/ View.ashx?M=F&ID=8679816&GUID=B8F087D2-07FD-4996-B1CF-1EFD261D7D01; https://www.seattle.gov/opcd/population-and-demographics; http://allhomekc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-Report_KingCounty_FINAL.pdf). Like San Francisco and Portland, the Seattle initiative does not entail debt or debt financing or higher taxes on working and middle class people.

Can Liccardo point to any initiative during his tenure as councilmember and mayor that even approximates these three from big West coast cities to the north, even though San Jose’s population and median household incomes were higher than each of these and whose houseless population was smaller than those of San Francisco and Seattle at the time? I didn’t think so. What’s more telling, as a verdict on Liccardo as a politician, than the above comparisons?

What passes for journalism, even from a so-called “newspaper of record,” is in reality shoddy stenography.

Criticizing is NOT LEADERSHIP, it is complaining.

What is your SOLUTION? If you don’t have one, than you are wasting time and energy, because you are NOT CONSTRUCTIVE.

Many criticize ACTIVISTS, because they are DOING SOMETHING rather than CONSERVATIVES that are just watching the systems breakdown.

Which is what we are facing right now, multiple business systems models that are not applicable to today.

Like Theranos, Crypto, Social Media, and NFT.

There is plenty bad and wrong about San Jose and the South Bay, and more, to criticize.

Well, that goes to show that we cannot have a constructive conversation. This forum is becoming nothing but an echo chamber of complainers.

This also demonstrates that the so called social media hype is going to collapse. Like the Trump Social Media Company “Truth Social”.

His social media company Truth Social has not worked out well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/business/trump-truth-social-twitter-spac.html

The extra time to complete the deal still doesn’t mean it is a certainty.

Federal prosecutors have been investigating potentially improper communications between representatives of the companies before Digital World’s listing last October and the unusual trading in Digital World securities before the merger announcement. The Securities and Exchange Commission is running its own investigation. Their findings could torpedo the merger.

Insider trading I bet.

In any event, you can BELEIVE what you want on FAITH. Because faith is something you cannot reason with. It is impossible to alter faith no matter what evidence you can have to disprove it.

Trumps Trading Card Company is dying too here is that news https://beincrypto.com/donald-trump-nfts-lose-momentum-declines-80-in-14-days/

So much for Donald Trump being such a successful business person

SJSU is STATE land, the City cannot touch it. It even has its own police department. The fact is SJSU is not in any way managed by San Jose. All CSU campuses are controlled by the CSU system.

You simply do not understand so much, I cannot go into every detail.

In any event, the NY Times are far more reliable than an anonymous poster with no credentials, nor any research, just a complainer. This is another MAGA attack on the so called MSM from the people that don’t understand they are being conned by grifters like Donald Trump.

[sigh]