Last week, Lyft and Macy's joined Square to donate to the No on Prop. C campaign. It didn't make much of a dent. Thanks to Benioff, the "yes" side has raked in four times as much in contributions, according to data from the San Francisco Department of Elections.

Benioff's stance on Proposition C has also caused a fissure with a political ally: San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

Benioff said the need for sustained homeless funding is best illustrated by a call he recently got from the mayor. Breed was looking for a donation of $8 million to acquire a site that could be used for affordable housing.

"She's out of money. Her budget was fully maxed," Benioff said. "The city has these shovel-ready projects ready to go and we can directly address these homeless people if we have more directed funding."

Breed disagrees, not only with the nature of the call — she said she asked Benioff for the immediate donation because a budget supplemental would have taken too long to secure the units — but with the idea that San Francisco can hike taxes for homeless services without consequences.

"Can big business pay more to support this? Yes, they can," Breed told KQED.

"But things like a ballot measure need to be handled more responsibly," she added. "Making sure that as we try and tax, that there aren't the unintended consequences of job loss for middle-income residents. I mean manufacturing, retail, those are things that are important to San Francisco."

The city's economic analysis of Proposition C finds that retail would be the sector most at risk of job loss, but that the tax's overall impact on jobs would be insignificant: an estimated loss of 0.1 percent of all jobs in the city.

Brimming beneath Breed's warning of job flight, and her stated desire for the city to get a better handle on how it spends the $300 million already dedicated to homelessness, seems to be a political frustration.

The mayor was elected in June on a promise to address the crisis. If Proposition C passes and doubles the city's homeless budget, it will likely be Breed — not Benioff or the homeless advocates who wrote the measure — who will be judged for its results.

"I want to make sure that I'm being held accountable for the decisions I make," she said. "Not the decisions that other people are making."

And there's a chance the heated debate over Proposition C could actually stretch past November. Supporters are hoping that a recent state Supreme Court ruling will allow the citizens' initiative to pass with a majority vote. Historically, local measures that directed funding to a specific source, like homeless services, required a two-thirds vote.

The tax measures in Mountain View and East Palo Alto have come with significantly fewer political fireworks, but also reflect a shift toward demanding greater corporate responsibility to take on the Bay Area's vexing housing and transportation problems.

Measure HH in East Palo Alto would tax large commercial office space at a rate of $2.50 per square foot to pay for affordable housing.

Supporters are hoping to capitalize on the recent growth of Amazon in the city, and Facebook's expansion in nearby Menlo Park.

"We're just trying to protect our community and have a fair share that will improve the lives of more people," said Mayor Ruben Abrica. "We're also trying to be proactive because we know that other development is going to take place."

Mountain View's tax is more heavily directed toward a single company: Google.

The proposed "head tax" in Measure P would tax companies for each employee, with larger companies paying higher rates. Revenue from the tax will go to the general fund, with the promise that it will be used for transportation.

The tax is expected to raise $6 million annually, with more than half coming from Google.

Google is not opposing the tax increase, and Mountain View Mayor Lenny Siegel said the search giant has been quick to assist with issues like homelessness in the past.

"They're a good corporate citizen but we can't bond against their donations," he told KQED's Forum. "So the tax will allow us to bond so that we can build the infrastructure that allows Google employees to get from Caltrain to the Googleplex."

The demand for more investment from big business, and in particular the region's thriving tech companies, is a reversal from the policy conversations that took place in Bay Area cities at the beginning of the decade.

Then, San Francisco changed its tax code to attract and retain businesses, with particular incentives for growing tech companies.

Many supporters of the Bay Area business taxes claim that those thriving corporations did not reciprocate the friendly policies.

"I don't see tech as very civically involved, and I think they have to be," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who told KQED she supports Proposition C.

"Like when I was mayor, the CEOs of the big banks — I could go in and ask them to help with any civic cause. Cross my heart. I never got a 'no.' Bank of America, Wells [Fargo], all of them said 'yes.' "

So instead of asking, the tax measures hope to compel Bay Area corporations to put a greater amount of skin in the game toward local problems.

The question remains whether a push like Proposition C has come too late, and is simply setting the stage for a fleeting victory.

"There is certainly a risk if we rely on this one tax to fund a huge part of our homeless services," said Molly Turner of the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. "If we have a correction or a recession in the near future, that's going to cut significantly to our ability to fund those programs."