Elon Musk says he’s serious about converting Twitter HQ into homeless shelter

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos encourages fellow billionaire to do it

The Twitter headquarters on 5 February, 2014 in San Francisco, California (Getty Images)

Elon Musk has said he is seriously considering converting Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter after becoming the company’s majority shareholder.

It is the latest suggestion the SpaceX and Tesla boss has made since buying a 9.2 per cent stake in the social media platform, along with changes to Twitter’s premium subscription service, cracking down on crypto scams and introducing an edit button.

“Convert Twitter SF HQ to homeless shelter since no one shows up anyway,” he tweeted over the weekend, along with a poll allowing users to agree or disagree.

More than 90 per cent of nearly 2 million respondents voted ‘yes’ before the poll was deleted. He later tweeted on Sunday: “I’m serious about this one btw.”

Twitter announced last month that employees can work from home “forever” or wherever they feel “most productive and creative”, adopting a similar policy to several other tech giants since the Covid pandemic began.

One of the people to respond to the poll was Jeff Bezos – the world’s second richest person behind Mr Musk. The Amazon chairman suggested Twitter should do a “portion” in a similar way to the retail giant, which opened a shelter within the campus of its Seattle headquarters in 202.

“Worked out great and makes it easy for employees who want to volunteer,” Mr Bezos wrote.

Mr Musk was set to join the board of Twitter but decided not to just before the appointment was to be made on Saturday.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced the decision in a note to employees, which he shared on Twitter.

“Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 9/4, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board,” Mr Agrawal wrote.

“I believe this is for the best. We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.”