Sitting in the elegant sunroom of her Pacific Heights mansion with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco socialite and philanthropist Dede Wilsey might seem an unlikely person to criticize the world of extraordinary wealth.

“No civilization has survived where there is only rich and poor,” Ms. Wilsey said.

She is being outspoken because she is worried about her city, where a booming economy, largely fueled by the tech industry, has flooded the region with thousands of overnight millionaires. Ms. Wilsey said too many are not sharing their riches with the community that helped incubate their billion-dollar start-ups.

“Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you give back?” Ms. Wilsey said, imploring the area’s newly wealthy. “In a city like this, you’ve got homelessness, AIDS, feces in the streets. It would be nice to give back something.”

As a member of one of the nation’s wealthiest families, Ms. Wilsey is a rare example of someone who speaks relatively openly about money. She said she does not seek the attention, but it comes with public-facing roles, like a controversial run as president of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.