Elon Musk’s Twitter is being sued by the San Francisco tech giant’s landlord for non-payment of rent.
Musk owes $136,250 in rent arrears on the offices, according to Bloomberg. Earlier this week it was reported that Twitter was being forced out of other offices around the world for the same reasons.
The company’s landlord, Columbia Reit, filed a lawsuit in a San Francisco court on Thursday, alleging that he told Twitter on Dec. 16 that they had to vacate the offices within five days, but they failed to do so, Bloomberg reports.
At the time of writing, there has been no public comment from Twitter on the spate of rent defaults. The company is also being sued for non-payment of charter flights.
Musk owes $136,250 in rent arrears on the 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. Other tenants of the building include Omnicom Group, Affirm and Credit Suisse.
The building is not the company’s headquarters, which is located on Market Street, less than two miles from the California Street site.
Earlier this week it was reported that Musk is no longer paying rent for Twitter’s Seattle office and is also planning to close one of the firm’s New York offices.
The San Francisco headquarters has been compacted from four floors to two, with luxurious perks now reportedly being ditched in favor of smelly offices that are no longer cleaned.
And one of the travel expenses Musk has refused to pay included a $197,725 bill for private flights undertaken the very week he took over the company.
Numerous other tour operators have also remained unpaid, according to the Times.
The payment of this private charter bill has gone to court in New Hampshire.
In another drastic change, the billionaire sent employees to a data storage facility in Sacramento to shut down 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 the servers going down could cause problems, but according to the New York Times, they were told the priority was to save money.
Some employees were called to work over the holidays due to system failures and potential internal data loss.
Twitter has stopped paying millions of dollars in rent and services in recent months – with Musk ordering its employees to renegotiate the agreements or end them altogether.
Billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk shows up holding a sink as he enters Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco on October 26, 2022
Pictured is Twitter’s California headquarters. The landlord suing Twitter makes no reference to the company’s headquarters, which is on Market Street, less than two miles from the California Street location
The company faces evictions from its Seattle office after failing to pay rent on the building, and security staff are also being cut in Musk’s austerity spree.
In San Francisco, he merged workers on two floors and closed four and fired janitors after workers went on strike for better wages.
According to current and former employees, the office stunk of leftover food and body odor.
The bathrooms have been left dirty, and Musk is now focused on weeding out the sources of the company-related leaks to the press.
He is focused on eliminating individuals within the company who he believes are against him – and who are described as having “erratic” leadership styles.
Employees claim that he often interrupts meetings at random and engages in lengthy conversations, calling in top executives as a sounding board for his ideas.
Many employees are anticipating more layoffs as U.S. sales continue to slow — though Musk hired several new employees to replace those laid off during the mass layoffs.
The SpaceX chief said in a live Twitter forum last week that the company is a “plane that’s heading for the ground at high speed, the engines are burning and the controls aren’t working.”
He claims Twitter is on track to have a “negative cash flow situation” of about $3 billion by 2023 – attributing it to its “crazy” cost cuts.
Musk said he will appoint a new CEO of Twitter after putting him up for a vote on the social media platform.
Since early November, he has attempted to save about $500 million in material costs and has laid off nearly 75 percent of the company’s workforce since taking over.
Musk’s takeover of Twitter was also partially blamed for the 70 percent decline in the share price of his electric car maker Tesla.
Important investors there are said to be upset that he is not giving the pioneering company his undivided attention.