Elon Musk Shines Light on a Big San Francisco Problem

The billionaire has been spending a lot of time in the city that is home to Twitter's headquarters.

Elon Musk left Silicon Valley at the end of 2021 to settle in Austin, Texas. 

This southern city is now the headquarters of Tesla  (TSLA) - Get Free Report, the electric vehicle manufacturer and also the crown jewel of the empire of the richest man in the world.

But Musk has been back in the Silicon Valley since October to finalize the acquisition of social network Twitter at the hefty price of $44 billion. He literally moved to the headquarters of the social network located in the heart of San Francisco to make big changes with the previous management team and find new sources of income to make Twitter profitable and also to amortize its investment. 

The Techno King as he is known at Tesla had to go into debt to the tune of $13 billion with major banks to finance the acquisition of the microblogging website.

As often, Musk is not limited to managing his companies. He has been involved in politics for several months and in the life of the city, especially when it comes to elected Democrats. He has thus just launched a harsh criticism against the city by directly questioning its mayor London Breed.

'Where Are Your Priorities?'

"So city of SF attacks companies providing beds for tired employees instead of making sure kids are safe from fentanyl," the billionaire posted on December 7 with a link to an article about a dad who revealed that his 10-month-old baby suffered an accidental fentanyl overdose at a San Francisco playground. "Where are your priorities @LondonBreed!?"

In the article posted by Musk, which dates back to December 6, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that a father of ten-month-old twins told them that during an interview that one of the children had suffered an accidental fentanyl overdose at a Marina district playground. The medical emergency required paramedics to administer overdose-reversing medication Narcan, Ivan Matkovic, the boy's father told The Chronicle.

City officials said they could not independently confirm all the reported details of the incident, which is still under investigation, the newspaper said.

The information seems to have shocked Musk, who has been asking households to procreate for several months in order to counter the decline in population in rich countries. 

Drugs are a silent epidemic in San Francisco. It is hidden in the back alleys of the city center and the hotel rooms for the destitute. The city's medical examiner's report released in January 2021 found that in 2020 drugs killed three times as many people as the covid-19 pandemic. Most of the overdoses recorded were linked to the consumption of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.

Musk's attack also comes as reports in the local press claim that San Francisco City Hall is seeking to investigate reports that Musk had beds set up at Twitter headquarters for employees he asks to work long hours.

Twitter 2.0 Has Dystopian Bedrooms

The billionaire, who has laid off more than half of Twitter's 7,500 employees, has decided to transform certain rooms into dystopian rooms according to Forbes and the San Francisco Gate. 

Musk, who has often said that he slept in Tesla factories and slept at Twitter until things worked out the way he wanted, wants employees committed day and night to the mission he has set. Local authorities in San Francisco are reportedly concerned about this lack of work-life balance.

"San Francisco building inspectors are launching an investigation into reports Twitter has converted several office rooms at its headquarters into sleeping quarters for employees," reports KQED Supervising Senior Editor, News and Newscasts Ted Goldberg. "We need to make sure the building is being used as intended" a representative of the city's department of building inspection told the news outlet.

The City's Department of Building Inspection is "reaching out to building management" to set up a "site inspection".

Musk's offensive has led elected officials in other cities to sell their city to the billionaire as the future headquarters of Twitter. This is the case of the mayor of Miami who saw an opening there.

"@elonmusk it's TIME to move @twitter headquarters to Miami. It's not about politics, it's about the soul of our country," Miami mayor Francis Suarez tweeted at Musk.