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Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

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Re: Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

#31

Post by cronjobber »

chandsie wrote: post #24
edoceo wrote: post #2

Stunt or Stand? So much noise right now it's hard to tell. Hope Time demonstrates this as a genuine move. BigCo with lots of PR weight can really keep the story at the top (or push it over the top)

I'm an employee, so for what it's worth, this isn't something out of the blue. Airbnb has a disaster response program that gets activated all the time for natural disasters and other tragedies - https://www.airbnb.com/disaster-response We're choosing to activate it in response to the executive order because it goes directly against our company mission to let people belong anywhere. I'm sure PR was part of the decisio…

Stunt, then, as AirBNB isn't providing any free housing. You're just going to browbeat people who offered "housing to displaced neighbors and relief workers" to underwrite "your" provision of housing to people who are neither neighbors nor relief workers.

Re: Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

#32

Post by Alterlife »

flashman wrote: post #23

Airbnb should run a promotion for free nights at hosts who live within a mile of a Trump property. He'd notice if someone was trying to take business off him, even nominally.

I don't think that would work.

I mean, it might work if airbnb and trump properties share the same customer base... which they might. But then it's more likely to attract people looking for free accommodation rather than customers of Trump properties.

Besides any of Trump's customers who want to make a statement have likely already taken their money elsewhere.

But then again I'm not from the US and I know nothing of Trump or Airbnb, so maybe it would work.

Eh... I have no idea why I started writing this comment :-/ .

Re: Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

#33

Post by ivan_gammel »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #26
CardenB wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You contact the hosts and then they have to approve you. Hosts review their guests after each stay for future hosts to look at.

Not 100% true, there are plenty of instant book properties on AirBnB which do not require any interaction between host and guest before the purchase.

It was the decision of hosts to list the properties for instant booking, so host controls who can stay anyway. In these cases it just does not matter for the host who are the guests.

Re: Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

#34

Post by ivan_gammel »

cronjobber wrote: post #31
chandsie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an employee, so for what it's worth, this isn't something out of the blue. Airbnb has a disaster response program that gets activated all the time for natural disasters and other tragedies - https://www.airbnb.com/disaster-response We're choosing to activate it in response to the executive order because it goes directly against our company mission to let people belong anywhere. I'm sure PR was part of the decisio…

Stunt, then, as AirBNB isn't providing any free housing. You're just going to browbeat people who offered "housing to displaced neighbors and relief workers" to underwrite "your" provision of housing to people who are neither neighbors nor relief workers.

You make biased judgement without knowing how the service actually works. If you had a look at the disaster response page of Airbnb, as just did I, you'd find that the UX flow is different. You select the disaster first and then offer your housing, which means the hosts are informed about their potential guests.

Re: Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

#35

Post by ivan_gammel »

chandsie wrote: post #24
edoceo wrote: post #2

Stunt or Stand? So much noise right now it's hard to tell. Hope Time demonstrates this as a genuine move. BigCo with lots of PR weight can really keep the story at the top (or push it over the top)

I'm an employee, so for what it's worth, this isn't something out of the blue. Airbnb has a disaster response program that gets activated all the time for natural disasters and other tragedies - https://www.airbnb.com/disaster-response We're choosing to activate it in response to the executive order because it goes directly against our company mission to let people belong anywhere. I'm sure PR was part of the decisio…

Looks like it will be something different from what you already have. Housing is necessary for those who are outside USA and cannot return home and for those who's being deported, which means it has worldwide scale, not limited geography as before, right?

Re: Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

#36

Post by ssijak »

Why have not you done that before for existing homeless people or other people in need? This just smells like ugly marketing scheme.

I mean, it is good if someone in need is helped, but why now and why that wording and scope to only refugees?

Re: Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

#37

Post by PeterisP »

ssijak wrote: post #36

Why have not you done that before for existing homeless people or other people in need? This just smells like ugly marketing scheme. I mean, it is good if someone in need is helped, but why now and why that wording and scope to only refugees?

Quantity of people and the time involved.

This case is temporary, and hopefully short term - homeless people need a permanent, long term solution. Furthermore, for people like legal US residents who are temporarily locked away from their home, shelter generally solves their problems as they need just shelter; while for homeless people it wouldn't solve their root cause of homelessness which generally comes out to either unemployability, addictions or mental illness.

This case also involves much, much less people that the homeless population. In essence, they're choosing to help a smaller problem where they could make a difference instead of a much larger issue that's intractable by those means.

Re: Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

#38

Post by ivan_gammel »

ssijak wrote: post #36

Why have not you done that before for existing homeless people or other people in need? This just smells like ugly marketing scheme. I mean, it is good if someone in need is helped, but why now and why that wording and scope to only refugees?

That's dumb argument, sorry. Disaster relief is temporary and help is provided to people who suffer from external circumstances. Housing for homeless is a daily job for the government and it is different, significantly bigger problem, for which the solution is not affordable for any single private organization or person. Private organizations have limited resources and they have the right to choose whom to support first. Moreover, here the main support comes not from Airbnb, but from the hosts who offer their houses for free. Airbnb contribution here is to provide a web service for hosts and people in the need and not to take money for that.

Re: Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

#40

Post by beisner »

ssijak wrote: post #36

Why have not you done that before for existing homeless people or other people in need? This just smells like ugly marketing scheme. I mean, it is good if someone in need is helped, but why now and why that wording and scope to only refugees?

I don't think you're giving them enough credit here. I'd wager that a lot of these recently-announced initiatives have strong grass-roots origins, meaning that employee sentiment was the primary motivator (rather than PR bandwagoning). Sure, it would be great if they had thought about this earlier or created a broader program. But you could say the same thing about the public - why only now do we, individual citizens, care enough to act and speak out? Sometimes it takes an action close to home to scare us out of inaction. Companies - even unicorns - are made of people, and those people are just as susceptible to social pressure and zeitgeist as the rest of us.
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