A Budget for All
If you stand at the corner of Market and Taylor on a Saturday night, the severity of the gap between the rich and the poor in San Francisco becomes blatantly apparent: Women in expensive gowns grasping the arms of men in tuxedos try as hard as they can to ignore the people sleeping on the streets before they enter Golden Gate Theater for an evening of entertainment. Though this is one of the most visible representations of San Francisco’s economic gap—the third largest gap between rich and poor in the nation—our city’s homeless population is not the only one effected by this crisis. Though they may not be sleeping on the streets, low-income seniors, youth of color, immigrants, people living with HIV/AIDS, low-income families, people in the justice system, low-income community-serving artists, and members of the LGBT community all face the devastating effects of losing health and welfare programs. Many people will pass these economic differences off as a fact of life. This is not the case. In fact, these difference have a concrete, identifiable, and curable cause that requires little more than a reprioritization of our city’s budget to help those in need, rather than to provide tax cuts and privileges to affluent businesses and people.
Mission of the People’s Budget
In light of this knowledge, a coalition of organizations and experts that represent numerous low-income and disenfranchised populations in our city created the People’s Budget. This coalition works to publicize budget cuts that adversely affect these extremely vulnerable populations by reducing and sometimes completely eradicating programs that provide people with basic life necessities, such as healthcare, nutrition, housing, and transportation.
At the same time that these cuts to health and welfare programs are taking place, the city’s affluent residents are experiencing a dramatic increase in their wealth due to years of Federal tax cuts. These cuts are taking place at a time when our country, and specifically our city, are confronting rising costs for healthcare and housing, as well as minimum wages that fall below the cost of living. On top of this, the Bush administration’s war in Iraq has cost the City of San Francisco $1.4 billion dollars, according to the National Priorities Project—a cost which is being taken out on the poor of our nation through continued cuts to HUD funding and by undermining almost a century of legislation put in place to sustain social welfare programs.
San Francisco is a city that prides itself on social consciousness. However, it is also a city whose annual budget does not always reflect this attitude. The aim of the People’s Budget is to prevent making the same mistakes here that are being made at the national level. In order to achieve this, they want to ensure that San Francisco’s budget process is open and transparent. Instead of following the national model, we should prioritize our budget to help the communities in the most need first, especially when funding is limited. Without a strong intervention by the People’s Budget, the marginalized populations of San Francisco will have to face the crushing realities of an economic system that favors only highly-educated and well to do citizens.
Massive Cuts
Currently, there is a threat to all programs that provide aid to San Francisco’s vulnerable citizens. The Mayor has proposed a decrease of 5% from last year for budgets in all departments, including those already adversely affected by cuts occurring at the national and state level. The People’s Budget List of Needs states, “This arbitrary request comes at a time when the City and County of San Francisco is called on more than ever before in its history to replace aid that traditionally came from the State and Federal governments with locally-financed assistance to our most vulnerable citizens.” Some of the major areas they are concerned about include: the aging and disability community; children, youth, and families; violence prevention; HIV/AIDS services; economic justice/living wages; community arts; the non-profit sector (i.e. operating costs); housing and homelessness; harm reduction and substance abuse; and immigrants rights.
In addition, the Department of Public Health has already announced massive cuts to mental health and substance abuse programs, some of which will close altogether by July of 2007 if they have not closed already. Because these programs are aimed at the treatment of mental health and substance abuse among the most at-risk individuals, such as disabled homeless people and homeless women in the Mission, the rates of necessary emergency services will undeniably increase which will in turn lead to higher costs for public health interventions over time.
On top of completely eradicating programs, on March 16 the DPH also proposed cuts to drug overdose prevention, needle exchanges, the Women’s Community Clinic, and treatment services for stimulants—all programs that would not only greatly assist in preventing high-cost emergency services, but would also save lives through drug education and by curbing the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS. We should not wait for a situation to become a crisis before treating it, especially when there is a human life at stake.
There will be cuts to public health nurses that provide homecare for patients with chronic illnesses, cuts to methadone treatment slots and beds, reductions in SFGH psychiatric services, cuts to prescription co-pay assistance, and the eradication of the SFGH Worker’s Comp Clinic. SFGH already faces nursing shortages that lead to not only less care for patients, but also a dangerous work environment for nurses and an overall loss of morale.
The City’s budget also threatens to put 491 households of people with HIV/AIDS at risk of losing housing subsidies, most likely leading to evictions and homelessness. There are already 2,400 homeless people in San Francisco with HIV/AIDS, a number which we need to reduce rather than increase.
The People’s Budget Statement of Needs
The coalition of organizations and experts comprising the People’s Budget put together an extremely detailed list of basic needs to address both the massive cuts to funding for social welfare programs and the funding deficiencies that led to many of these needs in the first place. For example, the proposals put forth to address the closures and cuts to harm reduction public health services would only cost the City about $3 million out of its overall budget surplus of $127 million—a small price to pay for services that will end up saving the City both money and lives in the long run. The proposal to increase staffing at health centers is only $4 million. The budget also addresses needs across all areas with proposals that do not even add up to the City’s total surplus budget, from programs that would aid the elderly and disabled to programs that would help eliminate the current epidemic of violence among young people of color in our city.
As far as housing goes, the People’s Budget outlines plans to address the crisis that has led to the exorbitant amount of homeless in our city. In 1978, funding for Federal housing was at $83 billion dollars. In 1983, that same funding dropped to $18 billion and has never gone back up. It was during that period that our nation began experiencing the excessive homelessness that people believe is a “complex” problem today. Right now, there are 50,000 households on San Francisco’s Housing Authority waitlist. Of these, 2,040 are extremely low-income families that should never have to endure the trauma of being homeless simply because our government and society decided that we would drastically cut funding for public housing to build more weapons and offer tax breaks to the rich.
By rallying behind the People’s Budget, San Francisco has a chance to redeem itself from the embarrassing politics of our Federal government. It will not take that much to address the real needs of our city by reprioritizing our budget to make sure everyone has the most basic standards of care. The proposals put forward by this budget are not at all grandiose. In fact, as shown through the detail and specificity of its statement of needs, this budget only tackles glaring holes in our public policy. By filling in these holes, San Francisco not only has the ability to live up to its caring and socially conscious nature, it also has the ability to save money, boost the local economy, and provide a healthier and happier living space for all of its residents. Instead of ignoring the problems we face as a city, we should tackle them head on.
Katy