Twitter sued after Elon Musk failed to pay rent on San Francisco offices

Elon Musk’s Twitter is being sued by the owner of the tech giant in San Francisco for non-payment of rent.

Musk owes $136,250 in back rent for the offices, according to Bloomberg. Earlier this week, it was reported that Twitter is being evicted from other offices around the world for the same reasons.

The company’s owner, Columbia Reit, filed a complaint in San Francisco court on Thursday alleging that he told Twitter on December 16 that they would have to vacate the offices within five days, which they did not comply with, it reports. Bloomberg.

As of this writing, there has been no public statement from Twitter about the spate of late rent payments. The company is also being sued for non-payment of charter flights.

Musk owes $136,250 in back rent for offices, according to Bloomberg

Offices are located on the 30th floor of the Hartford Building at 650 California Street in the city’s financial district. The building’s other tenants include Omnicom Group, Affirm and Credit Suisse.

The building is not the company’s headquarters, which is located along Market Street, less than two miles from the California Street location.

Earlier this week, it was reported that Musk was no longer paying rent on Twitter’s Seattle office and was also planning to close one of the company’s offices in New York.

The San Francisco headquarters has condensed from four stories to two, with lavish perks now reportedly tossed aside in favor of smelly offices that are no longer cleaned.

And one of the travel expenses Musk has refused to pay included a bill for $197,725 for private flights taken the same week he took over the company.

Many other travel providers have also not been paid, according to the Times.

Payment of that private charter bill has gone to the New Hampshire courts.

In another drastic change, the billionaire sent staff to a Sacramento data storage facility to shut down the servers on Christmas Eve. The center was one of three critical server facilities that had kept the social network running smoothly.

Some expressed concern that losing servers could cause problems, but were told the priority was saving money, according to the New York Times.

Some workers were brought to work over the festive period because systems crashed and internal data was potentially lost.

Twitter has stopped paying millions of dollars in rent and services in recent months, and Musk has ordered his staff to renegotiate the deals or terminate them altogether.

Tesla billionaire boss Elon Musk, on October 26, 2022, is shown carrying a sink as he enters Twitter headquarters in San Francisco.

In the image, the headquarters of Twitter in California. The owner who is suing Twitter is not over the company’s headquarters, which is located along Market Street, less than two miles away from the California Street location.

The company is facing eviction from its Seattle office after failing to pay rent on the building, and security personnel are also cut in on Musk’s money-saving spree.

In San Francisco, it has consolidated workers on two floors and closed four, firing janitors after workers went on strike for better pay.

It has left the office reeking of takeout leftovers and body odor according to current and former employees.

Restrooms have been left filthy, and Musk is now turning his efforts to eliminating sources of press leaks about the company.

He is focusing on weeding out people within the company who he believes oppose him, as well as being described as having an ‘erratic’ management style.

Staff say they often randomly interrupt meetings and speak for long periods, demanding that top leaders be the sounding boards for their ideas.

Many employees expect more layoffs as US revenue numbers continue to decline, even though Musk has hired several new employees to replace those laid off during the mass layoffs.

The SpaceX boss said in a live Twitter forum last week that the company is a “plane heading towards the ground at high speed with engines on fire and controls not working.”

He claims that Twitter is on track to have a ‘negative cash flow situation’ of around $3 billion by 2023, attributing this to its ‘crazy’ cost cutting.

Musk said he will name a new Twitter CEO, after putting it to a vote on the social media platform.

Since early November, he sought to save about $500 million in non-labor costs and has laid off nearly 75 percent of the company’s workforce since taking office.

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has also been partly blamed for the 70 percent drop in the share price of his Tesla electric car company.

Key investors there are said to be upset that it is not giving the pioneering company their full attention.