Until the NIMBYs are confronted, throwing money at the homeless problem, best case, randomly burns cash. (More likely, it enriches the politically connected i.e. those same NIMBYs.)

You can’t build enough shelters, nor build them or staff them economically, without solving that problem. You can dance around the permanent population, but you run into the same issue with mental-health and drug clinics. The NIMBYism makes the whole enterprise less effective to the NIMBYs’ benefit.

TL; DR This tax looks like another way for San Francisco to dodge confronting its landowning elite.

(Note: this isn’t a broadside against local taxation. It’s a complaint about this specific tax. San Francisco’s root problem is it refuses to build.)

My impression was that the homeless there cannot afford a home at any price due to life circumstances.