Salesforce founder on 'the key' to unlocking California's homeless crisis
Salesforce founder Marc Benioff is determined to solve California’s homeless crisis.
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“I have a lot of ideas,” he told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo after she asked what he thought about the homeless epidemic sweeping California.
Benioff, who is the co-CEO of cloud-based software company Salesforce, which is headquartered in San Francisco, believes “the key to homelessness is housing.”
That’s why a year ago he spent $7 million to work to pass a new measure called Proposition C in San Francisco, in order to create more homeless services, he said.
“We badly need extremely low-income housing and social services,” he said. “It’s been proven by medical studies, by clinical studies, and we’re just not doing enough.”
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California is deteriorating at a rapid rate. Homelessness in Los Angeles County has spiked by 12 percent over the past year, and the area has the nation’s largest outdoor homeless population. In San Francisco, human waste and trash can be seen scattered along the city streets and is being blamed for declining tourism.
Homeless tents line city streets in San Francisco. (iStock)
Last year the city received 27,000 requests to pick up human waste.
Benioff said big cities haven’t planned well enough to create housing for everyone. In his opinion, the French government’s housing strategy gets it right.
“If you go to France, you know, they have a Minister of Low Income Housing -- they call it Social Housing,” he said. “They plan it inside their communities -- we just don’t do that.”