Elon Musk called downtown San Francisco — where Twitter is headquartered — a 'derelict zombie apocalypse' amid its huge homelessness and drug issues

• Elon Musk commented on the drugs and homelessness crisis in San Francisco calling it a "disaster."
• The billionaire CEO said the "once beautiful and thriving" area has become a "zombie apocalypse."

Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted his thoughts about downtown San Francisco lamenting the decline of the "once beautiful and thriving" area and called it a "disaster."

Musk was responding to a link to an article about a show performed in the city by comedian and actor Dave Chappelle. The article, which was published by right-wing outlet Rebel News, said Chappelle had blamed San Francisco's problems on "woke" officials.

Musk tweeted in agreement: "Rightly so. The disaster that is downtown SF, once beautiful and thriving, now a derelict zombie apocalypse, is due to the woke mind virus."

Musk has publicly used the term "woke mind virus" several times in recent months, including in an April interview with Bill Maher broadcast on HBO.

The billionaire's remarks come amid a huge homelessness and drug crisis in the city which has been growing for years. San Francisco is also a major tech hub with the likes of Google, Twitter, Apple, and Meta headquartered in or near the city.

Twitter, which Musk owns, has its headquarters just a few minutes walk from the city's Tenderloin district, which is often cited as the epicenter of the homelessness crisis.

The United Nation's former special rapporteur Leilani Farha called the homelessness crisis in San Francisco a "human rights violation," in a 2018 report in which she deemed the conditions "cruel and inhuman."

Farha described seeing feces, trash, and discarded needles amongst homeless encampments in the city as well as families stuck outside in the cold, according to the report.

She considered the conditions in San Francisco as bad as in cities like Mumbai and Delhi, which are notorious for having some of the worst poverty crises on earth.

"The idea that a government would deny people those services ... when they have nowhere else to go suggests a kind of cruelty that is unsurpassed," Farha told Business Insider in an interview in 2018. "It's an attempt to erase people. Worse than erase — I can only use the word annihilate. It is a denial of someone's humanity."

A March McKinsey report said that at least 38,000 individuals are homeless on any given night the San Francisco Bay Area, which is an escalation of 35% since 2019.

The crisis partly stems from restrictive polices in the area including laws that limit where affordable housing can be built, an influx of luxury apartments, and high transportation costs.