Salesforce’s Marc Benioff Confronts San Francisco’s Homelessness Crisis at Silver SPUR Awards Event

At Monday’s 2018 Silver SPUR Awards Luncheon in San Francisco, four distinguished individuals were honored for lifetime achievements that have made San Francisco and the Bay Area better places to live and work. Many prominent Bay Area civic, business and community leaders were in attendance, and Salesforce Chairman and co-CEO Marc Benioff gave an address on San Francisco’s homelessness crisis.

Echoing comments he made recently in a New York Times op-ed, Benioff, a fourth-generation San Franciscan, called for more support from companies and business leaders to address the homelessness crisis. He expressed his support for the Proposition C tax that seeks to confront it. “This is a crisis of inaction and indifference,” he said. “San Francisco has helped our company succeed. But are companies giving back to San Francisco, not just with well-intentioned philanthropy but truly at scale, at the scale of the wealth that they have generated on the back of this city?”

“We are part of an integrated system,” he said. “What happens to some of us affects all of us. We are one. We have to use that oneness to focus all of our resources and all of our intention on what is important in this city right now. We know that is addressing the homelessness crisis. I challenge every business leader to ask where on their agendas the homeless are. Where on their agendas are our public schools and our public institutions?”

“Salesforce has given back a quarter of a billion dollars to the global community, and my wife and I have been able to give half a billion dollars to the community,” Benioff said. “Other companies, including many here today, have also given, but the truth is that too many are not giving.”

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who opposes Proposition C, also addressed the homelessness crisis. “We need more coordination and more resources shared among our counties,” she said, adding that it is important for San Francisco and Oakland to unite on this and other issues.

Tomiquia Moss, CEO of the homeless prevention nonprofit Hamilton Families, led the SPUR Awards event, which was co-sponsored and chaired by Salesforce.

The event concluded by honoring the 2018 Silver Spur Awards Honorees, who are:

Reverend Harry Chuck

Retired Executive Director – Donaldina Cameron House

Longtime Chinatown civil rights and housing activist

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins

Founder and CEO – Promise

American social justice advocate and businesswoman

Anita Friedman

Executive Director – Jewish Family and Children’s Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

Distinguished leader in health and human services and innovative social enterprises

Greg Moore

President & CEO – Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy

Visionary leader and innovator in urban park transformation – in the Bay Area and beyond