Elon Musk wanted to turn Twitter San Francisco HQ into a homeless shelter, landlord refused

San Francisco, like Los Angeles and most other major cities, is dealing with a homeless crisis that evidently, no one has the solution to. However, philanthropists and tech moguls alike are trying to do something to alleviate the situation. Elon Musk says he too wanted to help, but couldn’t because of one of his landlords.

Elon Musk, the founder of Twitter, has criticised his landlord for denying a plan to use idle office space at the social media company’s headquarters in San Francisco to help alleviate the city’s homeless epidemic.

“We tried to turn it into a homeless shelter,” Musk said on Tuesday night in a BBC News interview. “They (the owners) won’t let us.” He added, “We’re only using one of the buildings, so the other building could be a homeless shelter. We would like to do it right now…If the building owner lets us, we’ll do it.”

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Musk has shrunk Twitter’s employment by more than 80% since completing his $44 billion buyout last October, to about 1,500 people. The cost-cutting has left most of the 463,000-square-foot headquarters empty. 

SRI Nine Market Square LLC, an associate of Shorenstein Realty Services LP and a subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase & Co., owns the property. In January, SRI sued Twitter for allegedly neglecting to pay rent.

Musk has also argued with the landlord over his intention to remove the ‘w’ from the Twitter sign at the company’s headquarters, altering the name to ‘Titter’. He told the BBC that he chose to paint over the ‘w’ since the property owners refused to let him remove it.

Also read: Elon Musk hides ‘w’ on Twitter sign at San Francisco HQ making it ‘Titter’

When asked how the suggested homeless shelter would be administered, Musk said, “I’m not sure.” We could just let people remain. It’s pleasant… They might bring their belongings, their tent, or whatever.” Last year, before purchasing Twitter, he polled his followers on the notion, claiming that employees weren’t turning up at the company’s headquarters anyhow.

Around 8,000 homeless individuals live in San Francisco, leading to growing violence and hundreds of reports of public defecation and drug needles on the streets. It’s unclear how Twitter will handle sharing its office space with vagrants. 

On Tuesday, Whole Foods announced the closing of its flagship location in San Francisco, citing worries that criminality in the neighbourhood is harming staff. Managers were allegedly compelled to limit access to the store’s facilities in November after used syringes and pipes were discovered on the floor.

Also read: How left-liberals have conspired to kill cities? Here is San Francisco!

According to Musk, Twitter’s yearly income has decreased to $3 billion from $4.5 billion when he purchased the firm, but its expenditures have increased to $6 billion from $4.5 billion. It just has enough funds to operate for another four months without expense savings or a capital infusion. According to him, cash flow is “roughly breakeven at this point.”

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