The idea that San Francisco is broke is actually insane. More than 50 billionaires and over 8,000 “ultra-wealthy” people (the 1% globally who have over $30 million) live in the city. Most places would kill to be surrounded by this kind of wealth. But instead of using those incredible resources to help the 17.5% of San Franciscans who live below the poverty line (or any working class people), the Mayor, the tech oligarchs, the CEOs and real estate tycoons and their political allies are hell bent on making sure the rich get richer by giving them tax breaks and opposing anything that touches their money.
Budget cuts aren’t inevitable, it’s a choice to chop services instead of raising revenue. Why does the City insist on taking money from the most vulnerable instead of the most wealthy?
Key Cuts from the People’s Budget Coalition (tinyurl.com/PBCcuts2026)
- The City is cutting huge amounts of money for the following communities: 23% cuts to trans-specific programs; 25% to Filipino organizations, and 21% to Pacific Islander groups.
- Despite San Francisco’s history as the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, HIV service cuts now represent nearly 20% of all proposed community budget cuts so far announced.
- Immigrants and English language learners will be hit hardest by these cuts, making up about 40% of the reductions identified so far. La Raza Community Resource Center is losing 100% of its Rapid Response case management services, even though 42% of immigrants in San Francisco already go to court without a lawyer.
Daniel Lurie and Bilal Mahmood introduced a big tax cut for developers and speculators by lowering the transfer tax of properties worth more than $10 million. Since 2020, this transfer tax has brought in more than $500 million to the city for things like affordable housing and rent relief, and they want to cut that in half. The Mayor and Mahmood are making sure that the ultra-wealthy pay less in taxes, the city gets less money, and instead support balancing the budget on the backs of everyday San Franciscans.
Not only is the Mayor un-taxing the rich, he’s coming out strong against the Overpaid CEO Tax, which is a small surcharge on large corporations whose top executives earn more than 100x the median salary of their workers, and only for companies with at least 1,000 employees and more than $1 billion in revenue. Who’s against this? Billionaires like Chris Larsen (net worth: $12.3B) and Michael Moritz ($7.2B), CEOs from DoorDash, Uber, PG&E, and GAP, Inc., and familiar antagonists of San Francisco’s working class like GrowSF and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, to name a few. (Check out a more comprehensive list here.)
We might also implement a city income tax on the very rich. This article in 48 Hills talks about this possibility through a 1978 CA Supreme Court case called Weekes v. Oakland: San Francisco could tax the rich—locally—and avoid brutal cuts to city services. Here’s how.
Nobody except the rich benefit from not taxing the rich. Nobody is safer because of budget cuts to the poor, with fewer services and more destabilized people. We know that increasing the police budget year after year doesn’t make anyone safer. In 2025, SFPD had an $822.8 million budget, including an extra $91m for overtime. This year, the Mayor is proposing giving them a 14% increase (and still hasn’t addressed the overtime issue). Meanwhile, homicides are up 250% since last year.
These cuts won’t improve the quality of life for anyone in San Francisco. They aren’t going to make anybody more proud to live here, and they won’t make anybody’s life better. They simply protect the fortunes of people who already have more money than they could ever spend while making the working class pay the cost.
Resources
- The Cities With The Most Billionaires 2025
- World's ultra-wealthy primarily live New York, Hong Kong, Los Angeles
- New study shows poverty rate surging in key Bay Area city
- And now, another big tax cut for the developers and speculators in SF - 48 hills
- A San Francisco Coalition Introduces The “Overpaid CEO Act” to Protect Critical City Services
- The Corporate and Billionaire Opponents of San Francisco’s Overpaid Executive Tax - Inequality.org
- New S.F. police, fire contracts will cost $100M over 2 years
- After 14 Homicides in 2026, San Francisco Calls for Ceasefire | KQED
