America’s tech capital is rocked by the violent death of Bob Lee, a tech luminary who created Cash App, who was fatally stabbed in San Francisco on April 4.
San Francisco didn’t need that.
American technological capital is currently going through a deep identity crisis, since the end of the restrictions established to limit the spread of covid-19.
These restrictions have caused two big problems.
On the one hand, they have amplified the homelessness crisis that has affected the city for many years, and its corollary, the drug epidemic linked mainly to fentanyl.
The city has almost 8,000 homeless people out of a population of around 835,000, which is about 1%. This situation causes neighbors and businesses to complain about the camps set up in the streets, the dirt, and the vandalism.
Public outrage led to the removal of three progressive members of the San Francisco Board of Education last year. The district attorney was also removed.
San Francisco is emptying
On the other hand, the lockdown has caused many tech workers to move out of town, either to greener states or to states with a lower cost of living.
Many of these employees no longer want to return to the office, forcing tech companies to adopt a hybrid model of work. Most tech companies are also in an austerity phase, which includes the closure of many offices, especially in areas where real estate is expensive.
As a result, downtown San Francisco, which was home to a host of tech companies, remains empty, despite the end of the lockdown.
Office vacancy in San Francisco is among the highest in the nation, and space in the city is going fast, according to Savills, a commercial real estate firm. The city’s vacancy rate grew from 32.1% in Q4 2022 to 32.7% in Q1 2023. That’s a new all-time high, according to Savills.
To gauge the extent of the problem, compare it to the rest of Silicon Valley: Silicon Valley’s office vacancy rate stood at 23.1% in Q1, up from 22.7% in Q4 2022 .
“We expect office availability (in San Francisco) to continue to increase in 2023 as the slowdown in the technology sector persists,” Savills said in the report.
These profound changes that are shaking the mecca of technology have been worrying some of its most eminent figures for months.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla TSLA, is one of those who has repeatedly sounded the alarm about this depopulation of San Francisco. The billionaire left Silicon Valley at the end of 2021 to settle in Austin, Texas. He also moved Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas.
But Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October. This deal forces him to spend more time than he would probably like in the area. Twitter is headquartered in downtown San Francisco, just a few blocks from the city’s famous Tenderloin district. The Techno King recently decided to move Tesla’s AI headquarters to Silicon Valley.
A tech executive stabbed to death
The billionaire, who has moved politically to the right, believes that San Francisco’s current problems are tied to its identity as a land of progressivism. He believes that these values are one of the reasons that have accelerated the challenges facing the city today.
The latest development is likely to reinforce his point of view and cause even more damage to San Francisco. Bob Lee, the creator of Cash App and former CTO of Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block, formerly known as Square, was stabbed to death in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to multiple sources.
On the morning of April 4 at 2:35 am, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) responded to a report of a stabbing in the SoMa neighborhood of the city. According to the report posted on the SFPD website, officers arrived at the scene and found a 43-year-old male victim, apparently with stab wounds.
Officers provided first aid to the man, who was taken to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. The victim succumbed to his injuries, the SFPD reported, noting that the department is investigating the incident as a homicide.
Shortly after the incident, NBC Bay Area reported that the stabbing victim was Bob Lee. This was later confirmed by the MobileCoin crypto platform, where Lee served as Director of Product.
Before joining MobileCoin, Lee worked at Google and helped lead the team that developed the Android platform. He later joined Block.
Lee was also an angel investor. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has invested in companies like SpaceX and Clubhouse, among others.
His sudden death shocked the tech community.
Shocked, Musk decided to put pressure on the local authorities and, in particular, the district attorney.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” the billionaire said in reaction to Lee’s death. “Many people I know have been seriously assaulted.”
He continued: “Violent crime in SF is horrifying and even if the attackers are caught they are often released immediately. Is the city taking stronger action to incarcerate repeat violent offenders @BrookeJenkinsSF?”
‘Bringing justice’
“Protecting public safety and holding violent and repeat offenders accountable remains a top priority of my administration,” District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in an emailed statement. “We work closely with the San Francisco Police Department and file charges when arrests are made and there is enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt before a jury that the defendant is guilty.”
He said he “directed (his) staff to ensure cases are prosecuted vigorously.”
“No one who commits a violent crime, or who is a repeat offender, gets overly lenient plea bargains from my office,” Jenkins added. “Every day, the attorneys in my office fight for justice in the courtroom for murder victims and other crime victims. We make arguments in court to detain people who pose clear risks to public safety, especially those repeat offenders and violent offenders, and we will continue to do so.”
Referring specifically to the fatal stabbing of Lee, Jenkins said that she and her office “are committed to bringing justice for this senseless act of violence.”
