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Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

nytimes.com

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Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#111

Post by 6dqh5yapl3 »

cmurf wrote: post #92
exelius wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt Airbnb would agree with that -- since it would make their rentals much less attractive when compared to hotels (which have taxes around 15-20% in most big cities).

Ok then their model succeeds mainly on the basis that it's freeloading by being an exception to rules that apply to hotels. They're cheaper because they're not doing pretty much any of the things hotels are required to do, not just limited to taxes, but including the various health inspection regimes that states require for places of public accommodation including hotels. So yeah, you don't have to clean as well as a…

You can frequently get a room on AirBnB for a lot less than 20% off the price of a hotel. Often you're getting prices that are comparable to a bunk in a hostel, but for a private room instead. 20% taxes are not enough to account for this. The actual difference in price is due to changes in the capital and labor structure. Lots of people are renting out spare rooms that would have otherwise been empty, spending a few extra minutes making beds they would have made anyway.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#112

Post by pascalmemories »

nicolas_t wrote: post #107

As an host, I'll never discriminate on the basis of religion, sex orientation, color of skin, national origin or gender identity. When it comes to disability, I might refuse someone whose disability would cause risk in using the apartment and might have an accident because the apartment is not safe for someone who's disabled (the building is 300 years old, there's no elevator, the stair in the duplex apartment doesn'…

If I understand correctly, you're happy to be the one discriminating against disabled people, old people and people with children.

But you're not happy if you're on the receiving end of any discrimination.

Don't you see the contradiction there ?

Anti-discrimination policies are about ensuring people have equal access to services and facilities (whether it's contentious toilets or hotels or whatever).

You seem to indicate in your jurisdiction that renting an apartment without safety rails is OK, but in many others it's not OK and you'd be in violation of safety laws (and also discrimination laws). It doesn't matter that you live there sometime - you're renting it as a facility and should be expected to comply with safety and whatever other laws apply. And if you do it via AirBnB, you also need to comply with their rules regardless of legal requirements. And AirBnB get to change the rules when they want and you either agree or stop using them.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#113

Post by jonlucc »

tzs wrote: post #104
dilap wrote: post #6

I don't know if this is really a tractable problem. At the end of the day, either airbnb lets hosts decide who stays or doesn't. If they don't let hosts decide, they'll likely lose a ton of hosts, since having someone stay in your home is a very personal thing and a huge risk. If they do, then they're going to have significant discrimination problems as long as people are discriminatory, i.e., basically forever.

> If they don't let hosts decide, they'll likely lose a ton of hosts, since having someone stay in your home is a very personal thing and a huge risk. It's worse than that for Airbnb, I think. If they take too active a role in deciding who gets to stay it gets much harder for them to plausibly argue that they are not the entity that should be responsible for complying with zoning regulations and tax regulations and a…

One option would be to somewhat anonymize the process, not giving the host all information about potential renters. That still places the decision to rent to a particular person up to the host, but might not provide enough information to discriminate.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#114

Post by spaceflunky »

st3v3r wrote: post #110
spaceflunky wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did Airbnb for my personal residence for a few years, I was a "Super Host" three years in a row. These policies, while officially new, have been slowly edged in for a while and is the reason why I no longer use Airbnb. Why? 1.) Airbnb is still a new concept to a lot of people. Hosts need to time to work with a guest to make sure they know how the arrangement is suppose to work. Airbnb use to have a 'respond within…

Hotels don't get any of that. Why should you?

Because I'm renting out my personal residence. Why should we lump hotels and my apt into the same bucket? They are different types of businesses.

I think it's unreasonable to say that all home-sharers must act like hotels.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#115

Post by jasode »

dragonwriter wrote: post #97
jasode wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I said "brokering service" rather than "broker" for a reason, as a shorthand for a broad class of services And what makes Airbnb a "brokering service"? Is it the 3% fee collected upfront instead of commissions being billed monthly like Ebay? Therefore, if Airbnb collected money differently to avoid the label of being a brokering "service", would the outrage about discrimination really be avoided? I doubt it. >direct…

> And what makes Airbnb a "brokering service"? The fact that they take a commission (rather than, e.g., a size-of-listing-based listing fee, the way newspaper classifieds would), handle rental reservations, cancellations, mediate refund requests, and act as a payment intermediary, etc., all seem to point to them being a person in the rental business providing rental services, rather than a mere listing venue like a n…

Ok, I think the logic as you've laid it out makes sense to you and I won't argue it but I will explain how other people view what a "broker" or "broker service" actually is:

The core value-added function of a (traditional) rental broker is the matching of renter and landlord. For the renter, brokers recommend which apartments in which neighborhoods are appropriate. For landlords, brokers pre-screen for appropriate renters. With Airbnb, they leave this "matching" as a self-service exercise for both renters and landlords. The prospective renter has to manually browse the listings without the guidance of recommendations and the landlords get no benefit of a human intermediary filtering out inappropriate renters. In other words, Airbnb doesn't even do the main thing that brokers are supposed to do.

You don't have to agree with the above but that's how a lot of people think about rental "broker services".

>handle rental reservations, cancellations, mediate refund requests, and act as a payment intermediary, etc.,

For those who think of broker services in the traditional way, Airbnb is more of a "payment platform" that happens to specialize in rentals rather than a true brokering service.

This is why going after the "broker service" angle would be a weak approach in changing homeowners' minds about discrimination.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#117

Post by vkou »

guelo wrote: post #87
brightball wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my thought here as well. It's one thing to have very public businesses with anti-discrimination rules, but something like Air BnB where people have to decide in most cases who they are going to let into their homes is a much more complicated problem. We're seeing a wide trend in the US where people want rules to prevent people from making choices that they don't agree with, which was basically the opposite o…

> We're seeing a wide trend in the US where people want rules to prevent people from making choices that they don't agree with, which was basically the opposite of the point of the US. Freedom is a relative thing. Here we have AirBnB's freedom to not want racist hosts vs white supremacist's freedom to use AirBnB. The only freedom the ideal of USA is supposed to grant you is freedom from too much government meddling.

> The only freedom the ideal of USA is supposed to grant you is freedom from too much government meddling.

Really? Which amendment is that one?

There are a few prominent restrictions on particular kinds of government meddling in the US. This by no means generalizes to the rest of it.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#118

Post by saiya-jin »

pascalmemories wrote: post #112
nicolas_t wrote: post #107

As an host, I'll never discriminate on the basis of religion, sex orientation, color of skin, national origin or gender identity. When it comes to disability, I might refuse someone whose disability would cause risk in using the apartment and might have an accident because the apartment is not safe for someone who's disabled (the building is 300 years old, there's no elevator, the stair in the duplex apartment doesn'…

If I understand correctly, you're happy to be the one discriminating against disabled people, old people and people with children. But you're not happy if you're on the receiving end of any discrimination. Don't you see the contradiction there ? Anti-discrimination policies are about ensuring people have equal access to services and facilities (whether it's contentious toilets or hotels or whatever). You seem to indi…

why the attack?

the fact that he didn't put in enough safety in complicated apartment is the reason for you to attack him? Well maybe it technically challenging, would make the place ugly or is near impossible given the layout of the place or materials used to build it. You cannot just drill anywhere you want in buildings that are few hundred years old for example.

there is a distinction between sharing an apt and going to hotel. Latter is vastly more regulated, former is a bit wild west and exactly the reason why people are using it (because with this comes usually lower price if more people will be accommodated, more homely feel with more equipment ala full kitchen etc.).

Let's not try to make private apartments hotels, because then we end up with... just more fugly hotels.

Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts

#120

Post by paulmd »

bobjordan wrote: post #11

Yeah, well after having a multi-day house party thrown in my Houston home by a local guy that had the gall to write "God Bless you" several times before the rental, and Airbnb doing nothing about the damages (huge scratches on brand new $5K bedroom suite, a frigging water-logged kitchen ceiling, cabinet doors torn off hinges, etc.) we will no longer rent to any local, of any race. Anyone that rents my house is going…

Golly, and how do you think your neighbors felt about the house party? Something you'd like going on in your quiet neighborhood, or on the floor above your apartment?

Much like how cryptocurrency is a high-speed re-enactment of how and why we developed modern financial institutions and regulations, Airbnb is a high-speed re-enactment of how and why we developed regulations on and protections for transient lodging establishments.

Having some sailors come to town and trashing the hotel is nothing new, and neither are the hoteliers thinking that excluding "certain folk" is a good way to limit the damage.

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