Progressive politicians in San Francisco need to find a new hobbyhorse to ride. Blaming the tech companies for all that ails the city has gotten old.

This week’s fuss over the “tech tax” is the clearest example of cynical politics overtaking real-world problems. Supervisors Eric Mar and Aaron Peskin proposed a November ballot measure calling for a 1.5 percent payroll tax — only on tech companies — with the money to go to housing and homeless programs.

It’s a time-honored formula to stir up unhappy victims of San Francisco’s rising cost of living. Blame the tech companies and then say the tax revenue, estimated at $115 million, will go to curing homelessness and housing. What hard-hearted soul would vote against that?

Quite a few, actually. First, as has been pointed out in The Chronicle and elsewhere, Mar and his supporters knew this didn’t have a chance of making it to the ballot. They didn’t have the six votes at the Board of Supervisors needed to put it there.

And, even if it had made the ballot, the payroll tax would have needed a two-thirds majority of votes to pass. Unlikely, since in 2012 more than 70 percent of San Franciscans voted to eliminate the payroll tax and replace it with a tax on gross receipts.

Second, it’s always a good idea to say you want to fund more homeless outreach, but here’s the unfortunate truth: Tossing money at the problem and then congratulating yourself on creating a solution is not working.

“If money were the answer, we would have solved this years ago,” says Alex Tourk, spokesman for San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology and Innovation, a firm that advocates for tech companies. “We need innovation, rather than spending more money on a broken system.”

So here’s the hard part: There’s no lack of potential legislation to break up tent encampments and get residents off the streets. But the dueling proposals all debate how much advance notice tent dwellers must get before moving. There’s just one problem.

There’s no place to put them. The city shelters are mostly full, and the alternative Pier 80 location closed on July 1 after five months.

All of which, apparently, is the fault of tech companies.

After the tech tax was voted down in the budget committee, Mar and Peskin called a news conference to rail against Supervisor Mark Farrell, who “spearheaded the effort to kill the legislation.” The press release announcing the news conference suggested an ethics investigation into Farrell because of his “extensive ties to the tech industry.”

C’mon, Farrell didn’t kill the measure. It died a natural death without the votes. And suggesting that having “ties” to the tech industry is evil is ridiculous.

We know where all this is coming from. Everyone realizes and sympathizes with San Francisco residents who are unable to keep up with rising costs as the economy booms.

But it isn’t just the tech companies that are changing the city. The city is morphing on its own. All those rent-controlled apartments are turning over. Sure, some are Ellis Act evictions, and there are predatory landlords who should be exposed and shamed.

But tenants are also moving out in the natural order of things. Some are aging; some may change jobs or locations. And when they leave, the rent for those units jumps to market rate, which is too high for many residents.

That’s a sad reality in a free market system, especially in a city where the construction of new, affordable housing has been lacking. The city is getting a slew of new units online, including affordable housing, and this week both ApartmentList and Zumper, which track rent rates, say they have actually declined a little — 1.4 percent. Maybe supply and demand does work in San Francisco.

And for all the anger at the Twitter tax break, when it passed in 2011 the unemployment rate was 9.6 percent. It was 3.4 percent in June and 2.8 percent in May. And blighted Mid-Market has been revitalized.

I’ll admit there are problems with tech companies. The tech buses are enormous, and they don’t fit on narrow streets. But before we start another round of Google bus complaints, consider that, according to the Municipal Transportation Agency, there are 17,000 “boardings” on shuttles every day.

And just under a quarter of the nearly 370,000 boardings a month — 92,500 — are for trips within the city. If you’re going to regulate shuttles, also do it for Academy of Art, UCSF and the many neighborhood shuttles.

I’m willing to admit tech companies have contributed to higher rents and prices. But they aren’t alone. The whole economy is up. And tech has done some good for the city, too.

I’m not saying techies are the solution. But I don’t think they’re the problem.

C.W. Nevius is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His columns appear Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: cwnevius@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cwnevius