FACE, MEET PALM: San Francisco to vote on taxing rich businesses for homeless.

Some streets are so filthy that officials launched a special “poop patrol,” and a young tech worker created “Snapcrap” — an app to report the filth. Morning commuters walk briskly past homeless people huddled against subway walls. In the city’s squalid downtown sector, the frail and sick shuffle along in wheelchairs or stumble around, sometimes half-clothed.

The situation has become so dire that a coalition of activists collected enough signatures to put a measure on the city’s Nov. 6 ballot. Proposition C would tax hundreds of San Francisco’s wealthiest companies to help thousands of homeless and mentally ill residents, an effort that failed earlier this year in Seattle. San Francisco’s measure is expected to raise $300 million a year, nearly doubling what the city already spends.

Subsidies don’t get you less of anything except money.