Silicon Valley's acute homeless problem is on the ballot

SAN FRANCISCO — The images are startling: Homeless men, women and children huddled on the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area — often in the shadows of start-ups and high-tech behemoths generating billions of dollars in wealth.

It's a stark contrast that has gripped the region, and prompted four county measures on the Nov. 8 ballot to generate $3 billion over the next 25 years for affordable housing and services.

Under the most-ambitious measure, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has proposed a 0.75% increase in the sales tax, to 9.5%, to raise $50 million a year. Propositions J and K would generate $1.2 billion for the next quarter-century via a simple majority.

"There is clearly not enough affordable housing, or housing at any level," says Kevin Zwick, CEO of Housing Trust Silicon Valley. It supports Measure A, which needs a two-thirds vote to invest $950 million in bond money into affordable housing in Santa Clara County, which is less dense than San Francisco but where homelessness has become more visible.

County officials' decision in late 2014 to shutter homeless encampments along the Guadalupe River, Los Gatos Creek and Coyote Creek in San Jose and Los Gatos, called "The Jungle", flushed the destitute into suburbs and freeway off-ramps, not far from the campuses of Adobe Systems, eBay and Netflix.

"This (measure) is a game-changing opportunity," Zwick says. "It would help us out of a huge hole we've dug into."

Meanwhile, a handful of investors, including Sequoia Capital Chairman Michael Moritz and angel investor Ron Conway, have donated to Proposition Q, a controversial measure that would rid San Francisco of homeless encampments. If passed, the city would give residents of tent encampments 24 hours’ notice to relocate to a shelter or accept a bus ticket out of town. Law enforcement would be permitted to seize tents and other belongings.

The region's homeless population has been relatively flat for several years, though the severity of the problem is obvious to any visitor to San Francisco's downtown. Between the aforementioned four counties, there are 19,000 homeless in what is one of the most-expensive metropolitan areas in the U.S. San Francisco, home to Twitter, Salesforce, Uber and Airbnb headquarters, ranks fifth nationally in its homelessness rate, with 772 people without shelter for every 100,000, according to census data.

Just 13% of San Francisco households can afford a median priced home in the city, the report said. The news isn’t much better in the rest of the Bay Area: in San Mateo County, it's 14%, and Marin County, 18%.

In San Francisco, you need to make at least $269,000 annually to buy a median-priced home, three times the median household income of $84,160, according to Paragon Real Estate Group.

Rents have skyrocketed, with steep increases in San Francisco creating a ripple effect in the area. In nearby Oakland, average rents are $2,270 for a one-bedroom apartment, according to Zumper's National Rent Report for October. San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose are three of the six most-expensive U.S. cities to rent in, according to the report.

“I've been ostracized, harassed by police, and had to figure out how to survive while going broke,” says Dan P. Gailey, who lost his home last year while trying to build his own artificial-intelligence company, Asteria, in San Francisco.

Voters in San Mateo and Alameda counties will also decide on affordable housing measures.

In San Mateo County, home to Facebook, Oracle and Electronic Arts, Measure K extends a half-cent sales tax for 20 years to raise $300 million. It requires a simple majority.

A two-thirds vote for Alameda's Affordable Housing Bond, or A1, would pump $580 million into affordable homes for low-income renters, down payment assistance for first-time home buyers and an "innovation fund" for new solutions. Alameda, on the east side of the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, includes Oakland and Berkeley.

All told, the measures could create more than 20,000 affordable apartments.

There is little opposition to the proposals, though some question whether the measures will make a dent in what has been a decades-long crisis.

"The problem is visible, in your face, and it has an impact on the quality of life," says Jeff Kositsky, who in May was named the first director of San Francisco's new homeless department. There, he oversees a $220 million budget and 110 workers.

A steep reduction in spending on affordable housing by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, dating to 1979, exacerbated a minor problem, according to the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a non-profit coalition of Western community organizations dealing with homelessness. The problem has since deepened amid income inequality, racial inequity and mental illness in cities across the U.S., Kositsky says.

Such disparity is magnified in the San Francisco Bay Area, where tech has created hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth in the Bay Area — and a yawning gap between the digital-haves and everyone else.

Silicon Valley's flourishing tech companies have largely been bystanders on the issues. Google and Twitter are among the few companies to donate money and resources.

While money is sure to help, it may not be enough, say housing advocates.

"There is no easy solution; you just can't throw money at the problem," say Paul Boden, who was homeless before becoming executive director of WRAP. "We need to restore billions of dollars in HUD cuts that cost us more than 600,000 affordable housing units nationwide."

Should any of the county measures pass, they could have a profound impact on alleviating what has become a visible problem in the Bay Area. "I'm very confident we can do a better job for homeless vets and families over the next three years," Kositsky says.

Follow USA TODAY San Francisco Bureau Chief Jon Swartz @jswartz on Twitter.