San Francisco’s budget: Follow the money

Part 9 of a 13-part series: Where the growth really happened

To understand and fix the city’s spending problem, let’s look where the money has gone.

Since 2012 — the last time San Francisco had a population similar to today’s — the budgets for three departments have exploded:

— Department of Public Health 

— Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing

— Municipal Transportation Agency 

Together, their inflation-adjusted budgets have grown by more than $2 billion.

By contrast, the remaining 50 non-enterprise departments have grown at a much slower pace — about $15 million each, on average.

That’s not to say these three large departments haven’t faced challenges. And it’s not to say that their missions are not focused on important goals for San Francisco. But if we’re serious about restoring fiscal discipline, we need to ask hard questions about whether this level of spending growth has translated into results, whether it can be sustained, and what can be done to achieve good outcomes at a lower cost. This is the question that healthy organizations of all types ask themselves regularly.

Sources: U.S. Census, California Department of Finance, SFGov.org, Association of Bay Area Governments, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Standard. Full cites available on request. 

Originally published on The Voice of San Francisco on May 20, 2025 by Marie Hurabiell