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.
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 of the point of the US.
What if a host wanted to turn away somebody who was an avid white supremacist? This isn't the same thing as giving somebody a key to a hotel room.
> Those anti-discrimination laws don't apply to hosts' private homes or bedrooms.[1] Paraphrase of law: "All persons shall be entitled ..., and accommodations of any place of public accommodation,..., without discrimination ... other than ... a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent ... which is actually occupied by the proprietor ... as his residence"
One might argue that posting pictures of the interior of a residence, advertising it for rent by the night, and posting a price for such privilege is what makes a hotel a "very public business." (It's also why regulations apply to hotels.)
One might also wonder that if these properties make a hotel or B&B a public business, what's different about AirBnB rentals?
Sure enough, back in 1964 the US passed a law that defines (many/most) AirBnB rentals as places of "public accommodation":
"any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests, other than an establishment located within a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire and which is actually occupied by the proprietor of such establishment as his residence. "
If the lessor isn't living there, it's a public lodging. (Also, it's not the lessor's "home" by virtue of the lessor not living there.)
AirBNB has already established that they consider themselves very "special".
Most other activities happening in your home, including renting out a room to a housemate, are not subject to discrimination laws.
If you don't want a particular type of person in your home, you should have that right, whether that's because you have a safety or other concern, or because you are a racist asshole.
If AirBNB wants to pretend it's a public accommodation now because discrimination affects its brand, tough. Maybe they should exert full control by building hotels in commercial districts.
"Considering yourself special" like Airbnb or Uber - doesn't actually make you special.
Renting out a room to another housemate is a very different thing to listing a room for a nightly rate as a commercial transaction.
Whether that automatically means you should be governed by the same laws as a hotel is unclear, but asking whether it might be appropriate is a really important thing to do. The rules society created for hotels weren't just randomly invented rules - we wrote those laws for what we considered very good reasons to prevent certain kinds of discrimination that was actually happening and the we decided was wrong. I think there's a _very_ high chance that Airbnb hosts probably should be held to those same rules or something very similar but less directly aimed at hotels.
> I think there's a _very_ high chance that Airbnb hosts probably should be held to those same rules or something very similar but less directly aimed at hotels.
I agree. Hosts should do things like not operate in areas where zoning or other ordinances prohibit or require regulatory compliance for this type of activity. If hosts were operating as an actual lodging establishment, the existing legal framework would provide a solution to discrimination issues.
If Marriott tried to put a hotel in the middle of my neighborhood, which is an 2-4 family residential zone, that effort would fail. If you tried to open a conventional B&B, (there was one that operated about 6 blocks away for many years) you would need to meet certain safety standards like having appropriate fire egress (ie. fire escapes, alarms, possibly sprinklers), have appropriate parking, allow neighbors to react and provide perspective, etc.
In the case of that B&B that was in my neighborhood, they had to install fire escapes, and the neighbors requested that a fence be installed to prevent guests from using their lawn as a pathway.
Sorry, but you are wrong. There are exemptions that are relevant in a housing situation. Here are some:
1. owner-occupied buildings with no more than four units (which is commonly known as the Mrs. Murphy exemption)
2. single family housing sold or rented without the use of a broker if the private individual owner does not own more than three such single family homes at one time
3. housing operated by organizations and private clubs that limit occupancy to members
Rather than dig through the link you just cited, I'll quote the relevant bit:
Under federal Fair Housing law, the prohibition on discriminatory advertisements applies to all situations except the following:
Shared Housing Exemption -- If you are advertising a shared housing unit, in which tenants will be sharing a bathroom, kitchen, or other common area, you may express a preference based upon sex only.
Private Club and Religious Exemptions -- A religious community or private club whose membership is not restricted based upon race, color, or national origin may restrict tenancy only to its members in a property that it owns, and may advertise to that effect.
Housing for Older Persons Exemption -- As discussed below, certain complexes for elderly persons are exempt from prohibitions on familial status discrimination, including the prohibitions on discriminatory advertising.
"located within a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire"
I wonder if there's any legal precedents about whether a "single building" like an apartment block, with more than 5 different apartments Airbnb-ing rooms - suddenly and out of the control of any individual tenant - becomes a "place of public accommodation"?
Being a white supremacist is not a protected class in the US and it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of race in housing.
The law seems perfectly clear to me.
As made applicable by section 803 of this title and except as exempted by sections 803(b) and 807 of this title, it shall be unlawful--
(a) To refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer, or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.
The law, if you read it, pretty clearly does NOT apply to AirBnB (except possibly people who rent a large number of flats on it). From 803(b):
(b)Nothing in section 804 of this title (other than subsection (c)) shall apply to--(1) any single-family house sold or rented by an owner:...
(It's a long section, I've snipped most of it. Section 804 is what you quoted.)
(2)rooms or units in dwellings containing living quarters occupied or intended to be occupied by no more than four families living independently of each other, if the owner actually maintains and occupies one of such living quarters as his residence.
So if I'm renting out my home on AirBnB, or even a full floor of a 4 family brownstone, none of this actually applies to me.
> The law, if you read it, pretty clearly does NOT apply to AirBnB
It pretty clearly applies to lots of uses of AirBnB, even if arguably not all. But I think there's a pretty good case that it applies to AirBnB use without exception, simply because using AirBnB seems to make it applicable, as discussed below.
> Nothing in section 804 of this title (other than subsection (c)) shall apply to--(1) any single-family house sold or rented by an owner:...
(Note that lots of AirBnB rentals of single-family homes are not by the owner, and thus not within this exception even before considering the limitations on the exception.)
> (It's a long section, I've snipped most of it. [...])
And you shouldn't have, because the part that you snipped is all limitations on the part of the you quoted, including the most important one: "Provided further, That after December 31, 1969, the sale or rental of any such single-family house shall be excepted from the application of this subchapter only if such house is sold or rented (A) without the use in any manner of the sales or rental facilities or the sales or rental services of any real estate broker, agent, or salesman, or of such facilities or services of any person in the business of selling or renting dwellings, or of any employee or agent of any such broker, agent, salesman, or person and (B) without the publication, posting or mailing, after notice, of any advertisement or written notice in violation of section 804(c) of this title; [...]"
The use of a service like AirBnB would seem to place a rental act squarely within this limitation, and thus outside of the exception.
(b)Nothing in section 804 of this title (other than subsection (c)) shall apply to--
(1)[...everything you quoted...], or
(2)rooms or units in dwellings containing living quarters occupied or intended to be occupied by no more than four families living independently of each other, if the owner actually maintains and occupies one of such living quarters as his residence.
Since (2) applies to AirBnB, it doesn't matter if (1) does because the exception is (1) || (2).
Apparently people also have a constitutional right to choose "intimate associations", which includes who you live with. However, you can't advertise that you'll do this.
I'm pretty sure I'm not, at least in the way you are suggesting.
> Since (2) applies to AirBnB
(As noted previously, neither 1 nor 2 applies to many uses of AirBnB, where the person offering the rental isn't the property owner but is instead a tenant; but, that aside...)
I was actually responding to your suggestion that (1) applied to AirBnB -- or, more precisely, to a homeowner renting their home out via AirBnB; I was not responding to your argument that (2) applies to a AirBnB -- or, more precisely, to rentals of units or rooms by owners of homes for multiple (but not more than four) families living independently while the owner occupies some part of it (which, again, doesn't apply to lots of AirBnB rentals, including by-owner rentals.)
There are, I will acknowledge, a subset of AirBnB transactions which would fall within the exception of (2) from federal fair housing laws (which doesn't, actually, mean they'd be legal everywhere in the US; many states have much substantially narrower exceptions to state fair housing rules than exist in federal fair housing law.)
> Volokh (a very good law blog)
Volokh is probably the best right-libertarian law blog there is, yes.
> has blogged on this topic a while back
Maybe, but neither of the links you provide are "on this topic", (to wit, the legality of discriminatory renting via a commercial intermediary like AirBnB.) Both are regarding discriminatory listings via hands-off listing venues, which is a very different issue.
I'm deeply confused as to how you misinterpreted my comment so much. I was explicitly referring to (2) which is why I quoted that in full. That's also why I explicitly said "So if I'm renting out my home on AirBnB, or even a full floor of a 4 family brownstone...".
Maybe, but neither of the links you provide are "on this topic", (to wit, the legality of discriminatory renting via a commercial intermediary like AirBnB.) Both are regarding discriminatory listings via hands-off listing venues, which is a very different issue.
The point is the referenced constitutional right to "intimate associations", and you have not established that the use of AirBnB somehow nullifies this constitutional right.
> I'm deeply confused as to how you misinterpreted my comment so much. I was explicitly referring to (2) which is why I quoted that in full. That's also why I explicitly said "So if I'm renting out my home on AirBnB,
If you are renting your home (and not merely some portion of it), you aren't occupying at the time you are renting rooms or units in it, so (2) doesn't apply; (1) might, were it not for the limitations in (1). There would be no point in quoting (1) at all unless you intended to invoke it, and your hypothetical doesn't make sense unless you intended to invoke both the portion of (1) you quoted and (2).
> The point is the referenced constitutional right to "intimate associations",
The existence of that right is not what is in controversy here; whether it extends to the use of an actively-involved commercial intermediary like AirBnB, is. Volokh's posts that you referenced are not germane to the point actually in controversy.
> and you have not established that the use of AirBnB somehow nullifies this constitutional right.
And you haven't established that it extends to the situation at issue; that's the point in controversy. But what either of us has or has not established is irrelevant to the point that the Volokh Conspiracy posts you referenced aren't even relevant to the point in controversy.
Lock an "owner's closet" and have intention to return to the building as your permanent residence, and I believe you meet all needed aspects of 2 to have it apply.
Certainly if I rented part of a duplex where I lived in the other half, #2 applies. #2 continues to apply even while I'm at work, if I go out to dinner, or go on vacation.
Fortunately we have these things called "courts" that are able to apply reason and nuance in combination with logic, with human beings called 'judges' that are able to comprehend a difference between someone who went out to dinner and someone who locked a broom closet to try and falsely claim residence at a property.
You're not the first person who has tried to falsely claim residence at a property, it's a very common way to commit tax fraud by claiming homestead exemptions. The courts won't even entertain this sham for a single second.
Yup, temporary absences like vacations are perfectly allowable. You just can't say that you reside on a property because you locked up a broom closet, even though you never live there.
>The use of a service like AirBnB would seem to place a rental act squarely within this limitation, and thus outside of the exception.
I don't think it would be. The extra verbiage about a "broker/agent" is more of a secondary definition to help the law pin down properties that are "commercial". In other words, if you're paying the high price of contracting a broker, you're 99.99% likely not to be renting out a personal bedroom.
The homeowner's use of Airbnb is more analogous to listing in the "newspaper classifieds" rather than contracting a human broker.
As far as I can tell, very few people including states' general attorneys or Federal courts interpret Airbnb's situation as a broker service that is therefore subject to those limitations.
> The extra verbiage about a "broker/agent" is more of a secondary definition
No, its not. Its an express limitation on the applicability of the homeowner exception, and applies to any use of any rental (or sale) services of a broker, agent, or person in the business of renting (or selling) real estate in support of a discriminatory rental, after December 31, 1969.
Its only legal (since 1970) under the federal fair housing act to discriminate, even as a homeowner renting their own home, if the rental is arranged without the use of some commercial rental-arrangement service.
(And even them it may be illegal under state fair housing laws.)
> The homeowner's use of Airbnb is more analogous to listing in the "newspaper classifieds" rather than contracting a human broker.
That's certainly the argument a discriminating owner using AirBnB (or possible AirBnB themselves) would try to make, but AirBnB's financial and substantive involvement in the transaction is very different than that of a hands-off listing service like a newspaper classified section, so I don't think that argument would fly. If AirBnB actually acted like a newspaper classified service, that argument might be valid, but that's not what AirBnB does (if we were talking, instead, about Craigslist, that would be a good argument.)
Where "large" means "more than one". And not always that. If they own two, live in one but lease the other they're not allowed to discriminate on protected characteristics.
I believe if the two units are attached to either other (such as in a duplex or triple-decker), then they are allowed to discriminate on any basis they choose.
Being a white supremacist is not a protected class in the US
The majority of recent uses of the term "white supremacist" make me cringe. It's mostly propaganda: A deliberate emotional attack often based on a false equivalence. In any case, the impression I have as a frequent AirBnB user is that most AirBnB owners aren't interested in renting on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin." Rather, they are most interested in education level, socioeconomic status, and manners as a proxy for risk. They just want to determine how likely the potential guests are to cause an out-sized expense in time, treasure, and emotional energy.
Not letting people exercise such judgement is effectively creating a privileged group on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin. (EDIT: However, I would only reserve such leeway for people renting out a part of their own residence. People who own or have leases on a large number of rooms/properties renting on AirBnB should have to abide by such laws, as they are basically in the hotel business, and are covered by the applicable laws. Also, their increased transaction volume makes such laws enforceable, whereas a genuine single family on AirBnB would often not have such volume. Equating these different classes of AirBnB user would be a False Equivalence.)
The problem is that it's much easier to determine someone's race than socioeconomic status, then use it as a proxy for risk.
And even if we remove all racial characteristics from the application, judging by socioeconomic status is defacto racial discrimination because of the correlation between status and race.
And even if there were no correlation between socioeconomic status and race, it still seems wrong to discriminate against a poor person even if, on average, poor people cause more problems for the landlord.
socioeconomic status is defacto racial discrimination because of the correlation between status and race.
If you're "playing the odds" by using race as a proxy for socioeconomic status, then this is wrong. It's also a pretty poor proxy, in my experience. What about our judgements about people's judgements? (Meta-judgements.) If you're equating making a factual determination about socioeconomic status with racial discrimination, then you are using the same sort of statistical proxy you're arguing against!
And even if there were no correlation between socioeconomic status and race, it still seems wrong to discriminate against a poor person even if, on average, poor people cause more problems for the landlord.
Really, socioeconomic status is a proxy for behavior and ability to pay. Because of its rating system, AirBnB can function as a meritocracy. The fact that it has an effective rating system is a competitive advantage. Provided they are not absolutely locked out, it seems feasible for a poor person to earn a good rating in such a meritocratic system.
If AirBnB wants to further social justice, then it should make the meritocracy of the ratings fairer, instead of denying its utility to hosts. The former increases justice. The latter is using market power to force hosts into behaving how you want. You don't win hearts and minds by forcing people to do things. You win them by facilitating their voluntary transactions with all different kinds of people. (I've seen this first hand. I saw one of my classmates go from being a homophobe to being the best friend of a gay activist, by bonding over soap operas.)
I think Airbnb would argue that it's not their place to enforce these laws; and that if individual hosts are violating them, the government should go after them.
It's a typical problem of the "sharing" economy. I'm not sure the courts will agree with them, but their strategy has been similar to Uber's in that they come in, break the law (or at the very least operate in a legal grey area), then get so big that traditional regulatory systems have no way to deal with them.
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 hotel if you don't want, you don't have to pay the taxes as a hotel or even a regular long term rental unit if you can get away with it (thinking IRS will consider a portion of your house converted into business property and thus subject to business property gains tax when you sell the house, but not limited to this), you don't have to follow or even give notice that you don't follow ADA, on and on, because AirBnB doesn't verify any of this and it's claimed it's not their responsibility to do so; but they also don't support even a licensing program by municipalities and rental history reporting so that these municipalities could do their own verifications.
Basically if you even the playing field across the board between an AirBnB and hotel, you end up with something like an actual Bed & Breakfast (although typically without breakfast but often with access to a kitchen). All things actually being equal, even price per square foot, I'd probably pick an AirBnB, but I actively avoid it whenever possible because I think their success mainly constitutes free loading (and enabling it by property owners)
I agree with you -- Uber succeeded for many of the same reasons. They found a weak, fragmented, and hyper localized regulatory environment (very similar to that of hotels) that they could overwhelm with global scale after building up in a few "friendly" markets.
I suspect Google was trying to do the same with Google Fiber, but found the opposition (in the form of AT&T / Verizon / Comcast / TWC / Charter / Cox) was too organized and entrenched.
I agree with the idea that there are inefficiencies, unfairnesses, externalities in the "legit" way of operating short term rentals. But there are many hotels without 24/7 customer service, where the front desk is closed after 10pm and you get to call a number with urgent needs (like plumbing failures or whatever), etc. And they are cheaper than typical hotels, as are typical bed and breakfasts as compared to the boutique b&b's. So it's completely fair to be critical of all of these inefficiencies, but I think it's wrong to suggest AirBnB has some particular innovation other than their app connection buyer and seller, and themselves evading and enabling others to evade, the level playing field. Such as it is.
I don't feel Airbnb is particularly innovative on the technology side; they're just exploiting a combination of inefficiencies in government regulatory mechanisms and the naivete of inexperienced landlords.
There are plenty of horror stories about houses being trashed, etc. that professional landlords will cover with insurance (and that add to the price of a rental). By not being experienced enough to cover themselves, many renters expose themselves to a huge amount of risk. As the horror stories propagate, they will look to reduce their risk in other ways such as discriminating against renters that they have pre-existing biases toward.
Given the amateur nature of their landlords, I don't see a real way for Airbnb to stop this type of discrimination other than by providing insurance coverage -- which, of course, would significantly raise the prices of Airbnb rentals and likely force many hosts who are already operating illegally (i.e. against the terms of their leases) from the market. No insurance company in the world would be willing to underwrite a policy for damages that are already prohibited under an existing contract.
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.
I think Airbnb would argue that it's not their place to enforce these laws; and that if individual hosts are violating them, the government should go after them.
There's a world of difference between a single family letting their guest room, the runner of a "Hacker Hostel" with 12 bunks, and someone who rents 4 different properties on AirBnB but lives in another house. The laws should be formulated such that the rules for hotels also apply to the 3rd case. Such laws should definitely not apply to the 1st case. A "Hacker Hostel" is also something of an interest group, so I'm not sure what applies there.
I believe the point is that any action AirBnB takes to reduce the racial discrimination problem (moving to instant booking, reducing or eliminating the visibility of the renter's photo / real name) will also prevent hosts from discriminating against white supremacists (more generally, any non-protected class towards whom the host feels extreme revulsion)
How can you draw the distinction however? Couldn't the white supremacist claim another reason? (for instance, white supremacists often bridge their religious beliefs with their racist views)
> prevent people from making choices that they don't agree with, which was basically the opposite of the point of the US.
I'd stay away from these issues on HN unless we really have something valuable and new to add. I'll just say that there's another side to this and many strongly disagree with this notion. To sum it up and just put both sides out there (hopefully not starting a debate), people facing widespread discrimination, unable to get jobs, housing, health care, and even dinner and hotel rooms are not free, but oppressed. Also, it's long been part of US history, it's not a new trend. Anti-discrimination laws are one example.
It's my home and I do what I want. If you're black and I don't like you, I have every right not to let you into my house, no matter your history. You cannot debate this statement.
I disagree with how the question is framed, around whether someone can do these things:
People can do all sorts of bad things; they can mentally abuse their children, they can gamble away all their family's assets, cheat their co-workers and customers, they can hate and do many other things to ruin their lives, their family's, their neighbor's, their country's and the world's. People have the right to turn the U.S. into a broken state like Somalia. People have a long history of causing death, destruction, and pain to each other; I think that amounts to the same point in your comment, and I agree it's irrefutable.
But who cares what I can do? Once we mature past childhood, it's meaningless; it doesn't inform our decisions. The question is not what can we do - who wants to do 99.9% of those things? - but what could we be doing? What are our obligations to our families, our neighbors, our societies and the world? What do we care about? What do we do well, where are we causing harm, and how can we do better?
Saying we can be racist - well of course. But it distracts from the real questions: What harm is being done? There is very well-established, serious widespread harm being done to tens of millions of people because of racism; it's gone on for generations. What can we do to make it better?
In most of the world, people (or at least some leaders) have chosen poverty, ignorance, and violence over liberty, and justice. In the U.S., people chose to do better - they could have chosen otherwise; I hope they continue to do so.
I'll put a sharper point on it: People must be governed.[1] People have an enormous capacity to be violent, racist, sexist, small minded, paranoid, greedy, and dishonest, and the whole point of government is to collectively overcome these failings.
Obviously government cannot stop discrimination just as it cannot stop murder, theft, etc. But it can dramatically reduce it by imposing the proper social norms.
Your inalienable rights are a construct, enforced solely by "governments". Your rates in the state of nature are nothing like the rights your countrymen have agreed to provide you.
I'm okay with threats of government violence against would-be violators of human rights, like slavers and murderers. I'm not okay with using such threats to deter private discrimination in who people interact and do business with.
Violence is only an acceptable response in cases when a person initiates a violation of another's person or property.
It seems you are simply asserting the truth of your position, as though it is axiomatic that property rights trump all other rights.
Person A says, "I don't have a right to dictate how other people use their person and property, except to prevent them from violating my person or property"
Person B says, "I don't have a right to dictate how other people use their person and property, except to prevent them from violating my person or property or my right to be treated equally".
One is the basis of a stable social order, and one is not. Once you abandon the principle of private property and self-ownership, then human rights just become a popularity contest, about which values and attitudes are acceptable (not polygamy, but yes homosexuality! Not white racial awareness, but yes other groups' ethnic/racial awareness!).
It's not a viable principle to base a justice system on. It will inevitably lead to politics being turned into a venue through which groups fight to expand their power at the expense of others. This is hugely wasteful.
The evidence for your system isn't very good. Without government protections from discrimination, large portions of the population were oppressed, lynched, falsely imprisoned, denied jobs, education, rights, healthcare (and much more), and consigned to poverty.
An important question is, why would anyone desire to see others oppressed and abused, that they would defend the power to do it?
You're conflating violations of human rights, like lynching, with private discrimination, which violates no rights.
You do not have a right to a product or service (like healthcare), or a job, that someone else provides. You're only entitled to your life, liberty and property. As soon as you assume a right to things others produce, you support the violation of their life, liberty and/or property.
>An important question is, why would anyone desire to see others oppressed and abused, that they would defend the power to do it?
Private discrimination is not oppression. Using government violence to prevent someone from discriminating is oppression.
Private discrimination is something we all engage in, every day. What you're arguing for is prohibiting certain types of discrimination, in certain areas of private life. For instance, prohibiting racial discrimination but not ideological discrimination, and in one's business interactions, and not sexual interactions.
The whole concept of prohibiting private discrimination is wrong, as it presumes we do not have a total right to determine who we associate and do business with.
A group is going to revolt because racists don't want to associate with them? Seems unlikely.
I haven't seen evidence that private discrimination leads to revolution.
History is filled with examples of laws being passed to mandate segregation, and to discriminate against minorities, because the authorities were concerned about the fact that in the absence of such intervention, the majority demographic was mixing with a minority group through marriage and commerce.
I wouldn't mind some governments trying harder to overcome the failings of humanity. More clearly approving certain kinds of behaviour may not change the minds of adults but at least sets a good example for children. The problem is of course that you have one culture deciding what constitutes a failing of humanity.
Another being(assuming we all agree on what a failing is) the rights you need to violate to attempt(and fail, because it will fail) to address that failing.
Better to leave people to themselves than inflict certain misery in a misguided attempt to remould mankind in your own image.
Even accepting the premise that rights are "endowed by the creator"--how does living a life free of discrimination not rank higher on the scale of fundamental rights than private property?
"I'll put a sharper point on it: People must be governed"
Then maybe the government should tell you who you can have sex with an who not to?
It thought you people wanted the government out of your bedroom?
Telling people who people can have in their homes and not is fascist. These are not commercial businesses.
If you want to make a law stating that any flat rented out on an going basis constitutes a 'business' - and subject to regular rules - that's fine. But if they are homes - no way.
Maybe so, but once you enter into business arrangement to bring people into your home, other considerations start to apply. You can always choose not to rent out your home...
Nope, still fine even then. You do realize that if I rent out a room in my home (say, for a year's lease), I can discriminate on any basis I so choose?
I don't give a shit. You're a piece of human garbage if you discriminate based on skin colour, and you shouldn't be allowed to do it while having your own little hotel in your house.
Getting a roommate is different. You can still be a piece of garbage and discriminate, but that's your business.
Under federal Fair Housing law, the prohibition on discriminatory advertisements applies to all situations except the following:
Shared Housing Exemption -- If you are advertising a shared housing unit, in which tenants will be sharing a bathroom, kitchen, or other common area, you may express a preference based upon sex only.
Private Club and Religious Exemptions -- A religious community or private club whose membership is not restricted based upon race, color, or national origin may restrict tenancy only to its members in a property that it owns, and may advertise to that effect.
Housing for Older Persons Exemption -- As discussed below, certain complexes for elderly persons are exempt from prohibitions on familial status discrimination, including the prohibitions on discriminatory advertising.
"I'd stay away from these issues on HN unless we really have something valuable and new to add."
Enough with this rubbish - your comment is that of the totalitarian.
Homes are not businesses, and people have a right to decide who they let it - and not.
It's not a simplistic decision, and there are probably many factors. Personally - if someone looked like a scruffy bum, I don't think I'd want them renting my AirBnB if I had a place. Frankly, I don't care if it's 'discriminatory'.
More importantly - shutting down the discussion with political y loaded ideology is just wrong. These are nuanced issues, you don't get to win by saying the word 'racist'.
"If you have personal preferences about whom you let live in your home that don't align with mine, you shouldn't be allowed to have anyone in your home at all!"
As a society, we decided to amend the social contract to remedy this. You can choose who to have in your house based on any criteria you like. You cannot choose who to rent to on the same terms.
"The other way" described in the article looks like this: government insured private mortgages depending on racial build of the neighborhood, with the best insurance available only to white-only ones, and none available to ones when black people lived, so the government artificially lowered costs for white people buying in white neighborhoods and created a huge cost (and disincentive) to allow any non-white people to enter those neighborhoods, however rich and financially stable by themselves they might be.
How exactly this is an example that proves necessity of government regulating private rentals?
>we decided to amend the social contract to remedy this
Where in the social contract is this clause? I can't find it.
"It's in the social contract" is the ultimate weasel appeal. You're citing the authority of an imaginary document that, miraculously, contains whatever arbitrary moral edicts the person who invokes it happens to agree with.
Transactions should be voluntary. People should not be forced to do business against their will. Whoever "we" is in your post, I'm not part of it, because I have a moral objection to slavery (I.e. Involuntary labor).
Not that what AirBNB is doing constitutes involuntary labor; they're a private business and can set whatever terms they want for using their platform, in accordance with the principles I've outlined. I'm just saying that forcing homeowners to take in people they don't want to is sub-optimal and alienating for homeowners.
There's nothing imaginary about it. Discrimination in housing has been illegal since the 1970s.
Airbnb has found (accidentally) an unforeseen loophole in the law, where a practice that had only a marginal impact on the distribution of housing is on track to make a more significant impact. They know as well as anyone else that the law is going to catch up, unless they keep human nature from using Airbnb as a vector to re-segregate a big chunk of the housing market.
If you have personal preferences about whom you conduct business with, you shouldn't be allowed to conduct business with anyone.
This isn't about your home; this is about your use of your home as a capital asset. You can allow into your home anyone you choose to and bar anyone you choose to. But as a society we have agreed that we--through our government--most certainly have a stake in making sure that you treat others equitably in your business transactions, and that that use of your home as a capital asset in a business transaction means you forego other rights in the process.
[If you have personal preferences about whom you conduct business with, you shouldn't be allowed to conduct business with anyone.]
Why? If someone chooses to discriminate, why not let them suffer the consequences of lost potential revenue naturally?
It gives people who don't discriminate a chance to step in and gain market share.
It reminds me of the story of the bakery who wouldn't make a wedding cake for a gay couple. If I owned a bakery, I would put up a sign the next day saying "we will happily make cakes for gay couples".
You're assuming a lot here. You're assuming there are multiple bakers. You're assuming the bakers aren't colluding. You're assuming that the homophobic baker isn't being rewarded through additional patronage or via other methods, i.e., the GoFundMes etc. for their nonexistent plights. And you're assuming that a normal-person baker who doesn't hate gay people would not be shunned for their support.
The market will and does fail in the face of bigotry and discrimination; we've seen it from redlining to, well, now. Addressing market failures is the government's job.
I see your point. I guess for something like this to work, bigotry/racism/whatever would have to decrease in popularity to the point where you would be shunned harder if you were a bigot than if you were a person who openly objected to bigotry. We may not be there yet, but I do feel optimistic that we will eventually get there. Things were much worse only a short time ago. One thing that makes this ("this" being the idea of the market “handling” the problem) harder to accomplish is the fact that many people who may not be discriminatory themselves tend to have a passive attitude towards discrimination as long as it’s not happening to them. For example, many white people aren’t racist, but would they all agree to boycott a store that was openly racist towards black people? Probably not.
I think much of the problem is that these toxic effects aren't being created by overt bigotry, but rather by cognitive biases. The people rescinding reservations are doing so out of loss aversion, which is a very powerful human impulse. We're also powerfully geared to think differently about outgroups than we do about ingroups, which makes it easy for us to believe that there's a higher degree of risk in allowing a black family to stay in our house than a white one.
Social stigma might blunt these effects but it's unlikely to eliminate them any time soon. I bet a lot of the people who (effectively) refuse to rent to black people don't think they're the slightest bit biased against black people. They're not keeping track of their individual decisions about rental applicants, and they can easily let their brains fill in the blanks to tell them there were all sorts of negative signals they picked up on when declining reservations.
One of the reasons things are much better now are because laws against discrimination change what is socially acceptable. As regards the market handling it, we needn't speculate, just look at the actual history of racial discrimination in the US, from white-only diners to schools, that was only overcome by direct government intervention.
You can be optimistic all you like that we'll "eventually get there" (I'm not) but optimism doesn't do much for people whose rights are being infringed today.
Because we tried that and it didn't work. It wasn't a single decision that resulted in redlining that forced all the black people in cities to under-served slums. It was an aggregation of millions of personal decisions, many of them by otherwise reasonable people who were simply responding to the very powerful human cognitive bias of loss aversion. So, as a society, we decided to do what can to foreclose on that pathology.
Why loss aversion? People don't want a black person in their home because they believe that black people are more likely to mess up their home than white people. They would rather not rent out their home at all.
Are you saying that if black people live in one society and white people live in one society, then the black one will necessarily be hundreds times worse than the white one?
Because that's what it sounds like you are saying.
That's not at all what he's saying. He's saying that, when you segment off the institutionally subjugated part of your population--the part of the population who has historically been denied economic opportunities, educational opportunities, and legal rights--you are going to have two populations that have very different growth curves.
And, historically and into the present, there are cultural incentives (racist-ass racism) and economic incentives (risk aversion) to make that happen.
> It gives people who don't discriminate a chance to step in and gain market share.
The next step is that the discriminating companies are out-competed and go out of business, leaving only non-discriminating companies. Conclusion: that's why there are no discriminating companies left!
This is a nice thought, but it barely works in theory and I've never seen it work in practice. That the consequent isn't observed regularly should tell you something about the assumptions we started with.
Now what happens when (not if) people decide to encourage businesses to discriminate by withholding business from the ones that don't, or worse? This actually happened in the US and because defectors were punished it's not something that was going away nicely on its own.
because it also effects those being discriminated against. At the very least that couple had to put up with another fresh dose of hatred and bigotry against them, and spend their time looking for another baker.
Depending on how bad the problem is you could end up with ghettos and other nasty things because of people who aren't able to get any sort of service.
Being denoted as such in federal law. The original Civil Rights Act, in 1964, specified race, color, sex, religion, and national origin; since then a few classes (pregnancy/marital status, age, citizenship, etc.) have been added over time.
Note also that while "protected class" is often treated in discussion as if it was a consistent list across all of the law (at least, within, e.g., federal law), this is not the case: protected classes for particular anti-discrimination laws can be different, and may be different from the Constitutional-law set of suspect and quasi-suspect classes (a concept often conflated with that of "protected classes") that are relevant to equal protection analysis under the 14th Amendment (and, though the list of classes within those categories may be different, under similar state constitutional provisions.)
I see. I honestly didn't know much about the specifics of protected classes before today.
So, currently, political affiliation is not a protected class, but it is considered a gray area by many.
Many may feel that political affiliation should be considered a protected class, however, if it becomes one, would that mean that Nazism is now protected?
Or coming at it from the other angle, as it stands, a religious extremist who believes that all members of a particular race/religion/orientation/etc should be put to death is currently protected. Why is that protected but Nazism not? Or does the protection become void as soon as you use it negatively towards another protected class? I'm genuinely asking.
Even though Nazism isn’t technically a religion, it seems very similar to religious extremism in many ways.
Nazism is in many ways protected. Cities cannot deny permits to neo-Nazi groups to assemble, for instance.
The comparison between Nazism and discrimination against black people is pretty creepy, though.
The experience of black people on Airbnb is: "Here is an amazing looking listing. I'm psyched to see if it's available for my trip. Click. Oh! It is available! How excellent. I'll plan accordingly." Then, a few hours later, when the owner has noticed the applicant's African American sounding name, the reservation is rescinded. It happens repeatedly, and there's nothing the renter can do about it.
The experience of the neo-Nazi is roughly the same, except the first time it happens they take the swastika out of their profile picture and from then on everything works peachy for them.
> Nazism is in many ways protected. Cities cannot deny permits to neo-Nazi groups to assemble, for instance.
That's not being a protected class (which is a statutory issue), or even being a Con-law suspect or quasi-suspect class, that's simply application of the 1st Amendment (incorporated by the 14th). Its a whole different, unrelated area of protection.
> The experience of the neo-Nazi is roughly the same, except the first time it happens they take the swastika out of their profile picture and from then on everything works peachy for them.
Which pretty much also works for many victims of religious discrimination, but even so religion is (and political affiliation, Nazi or otherwise, is not) a protected class under fair housing law. So, insofar as its a difference between "Nazis" and "blacks", its a difference largely orthogonal to the issue of protected class status under fair housing laws.
> Nazism is in many ways protected. Cities cannot deny permits to neo-Nazi groups to assemble, for instance.
That's a straightforward First Amendment issue.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
You can't prohibit neo-Nazis from peaceably assembling. You can't prohibit people wearing purple shirts from peaceably assembling. In neither case does that make neo-Nazis nor purple-shirt-wearers a protected class.
> Many may feel that political affiliation should be considered a protected class, however, if it becomes one, would that mean that Nazism is now protected?
As tptacek notes, in many ways Nazism is protected through other means. But to directly answer your question, I think the answer is a firm maybe. Because it depends on whether Nazism is recognized as a political affiliation. Which means that that question, too, needs to be settled. (Maybe it is. I don't know.)
That said, I don't think political affiliation should be a protected class (it's something that isn't intrinsic in the way that race or gender identity is and, as tptacek mentioned, can be "taken off" at will) and I don't think it ever practically could be one so I don't think about it that often. Similarly, I also don't really think religious affiliation should be, except that in a practical sense it serves as a shield to protect minority groups as it currently stands so I don't mind the kluge.
> Or does the protection become void as soon as you use it negatively towards another protected class?
I am unclear on the interrelations that you posit, though I just asked a con-law friend for his take and (according to him) it depends on whether or not it is a place of "public accommodation"--retail stores, service businesses, educational institutions. In such a case, yes, it is not lawful to refuse to serve that customer.
You should not be able to sell that space through what users expect to work like a public accommodation. The same goes for your car. That's what it costs to be a racist. Boo friken hoo.
> 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.
Arguably, the central point of the US was exactly to prevent people in positions of relative power from making certain decisions that others with less individual power disagreed with; perhaps the central debate between the modern left and modern right in the US is whether that generalizes from the formal political positions of relative power that were salient at the time of founding to economic positions of relative power (the position of the modern left) or whether the restrictions should be limited to only the domain of formal political power and that the exercise of economic power should be unconstrained (the position of the modern right.)
Are you making a point about AirBnB specifically or the U.S. generally? In case of the former, I can't tell which party (the renter or the tenant) is supposed to be in the position of relative power.
>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.
Doesn't that describe every rule ever? I don't think the point of the US was to be lawless.
> 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.
That's really the crux of what I'm getting at here.
People who are using AirBnB to rent space in their homes will also have the freedom to stop doing so if they are no longer comfortable losing any say regarding who they are willing to let stay.
If anything, AirBnB is really opening the door for a competitor who totally defers to the property owner to cut into their market share.
It's not about WhiteBnB. It's about WhomeverIWantBnB. I am white, European, affluent, from a popular country and was rejected many times by AirBnB hosts (most of them blacks or women), so what? I looked elsewhere. It's really their right to provide accommodation to whomever they wish, it's their property. If AirBnB doesn't want them, they'd go elsewhere and AirBnB will go the way GitHub is going. Most hosts are featured on many competitors when you talk to them; they were happy about the least amount of hassle coming from AirBnB, but if they have to hop over many hurdles...
I really think US is now getting to a completely different extreme - why should be whites and men so severely disadvantaged? You are getting to a point that when you don't enthusiastically approve of whatever a SJW says, you are instantly labeled an enemy.
Go and watch video how Turks in some remote city were kicking out Korean tourists - that's a problem you should focus on if you want to make the world a better place. First world problems...
> If AirBnB doesn't want them, they'd go elsewhere and AirBnB will go the way GitHub is going.
So, exactly where it is now?
I know it's super popular in regressive circles to think that GitHub is somehow failing because fffffemninisms, but it's also untrue.
> I really think US is now getting to a completely different extreme - why should be whites and men so severely disadvantaged?
We're not. Claims to the contrary are indicative of self-adopted persecution complexes and mistaken beliefs in zero-sum sociology. Source: straight white male in one of the most liberal parts of the United States and doing just fine.
Source: straight white male in one of the most liberal parts of the United States and doing just fine.
It's mostly about socioeconomic status. The overarching problem is the conflation of things like race with socioeconomic status. Poor white males being conflated with affluent white males is basically a part of the same phenomenon as poor black males being conflated with affluent black males. The former results in poor white males being discriminated against. The latter results in "driving while black" or my ex girlfriend's devout uncle and his well behaved sons being treated like drug dealers by the local police.
I'm not saying poor people of one color have it better or worse than poor people of another color. (And for the record, affluent whites still can have it much better than affluent people of color, depending on context.) The whole problem is the use of race as a proxy for socioeconomic status, which creates an uneven playing field -- which creates social injustice. Let's be aware of this and not contribute to it.
Sure but in general poor whites are still better off than poor blacks. It's really hard to make the case that white men are systematically disadvantaged in any real world scenarios besides maybe some internet or college social justice activist circles.
Sure but in general poor whites are still better off than poor blacks.
So if our society mistreats two groups, only the group that gets treated worst counts? No. Suckiness based on discrimination is bad, period. It's still sucks, even if you're affluent, actually. It's this constant background corrosive.
How much interaction do you have with the justice system? It's no picnic being poor and dealing with them. How much do you deal with the police? It's no picnic being poor and dealing with police you don't know. Organizations across society are crappy to the socioeconomic disadvantaged, period. Heck, even employment is crappy to the socioeconomic disadvantaged!
The thing to watch out for in the struggle for social justice across history: Letting yourself create a scapegoat. Don't let some sort of salient indelible marker become a proxy for who someone really is as a human being. That's the root cause of the problem in the first place! Just as this goes for the fallacies of "blacks being criminals" or "Asians being good at math" or "Jewish people being business sharks" it also goes for white men being angry "supremacists."
You probably noticed that many of the most talented developers are idealistic and support meritocracy. Then you see the guys that created GitHub and made it lovable by those top guys, getting unceremoniously kicked out. Maybe it's a good business for a while, but many of those brightest developers move away and the best projects will grow elsewhere. So that's for your "regressive circles". It's a simple lack of justice for those guys.
You are probably a high-income white male. Now imagine how your life would be were you a low-income white male with a dadbod-shape. Not everyone is as lucky as we are (for the record, I am affluent, very tall, athletic, popular amongst girls) - I see plenty of these problems amongst my less lucky friends and frankly I reject this stupid game of taking care only of myself and not helping people around me. I know this is un-american, but I couldn't care less.
This comment doesn't provide a substantive basis to any of its claims, and unfortunately, whether the author means it that way or not, it reads like a lot of racial propaganda. Spreading that kind of idea has historically led to very bad results, with many people getting hurt, killed, and oppressed. I hope we can be very careful and apply scrutiny to what we write on the issue; words have serious impact.
Nobody should be disadvantaged; it doesn't matter what the color of your skin is. If you look around society, such as SV companies, Congress, on TV, in college, on Wall Street, or any other measure, you'll see a lot of white guys doing very well; it's been that way for hundreds of years. No research I know of shows white men having trouble getting Airbnb rooms, I've never seen it mentioned, and I'd be pretty surprised. Factually, it's obvious, very well-established, and there is a long history regarding what groups are disadvantaged. We should do something about it.
Finally, I hope that in a free society I can disagree with your comment without being preemptively attacked and my behavior criticized.
Why would I want to attack you? I'd love to see you achieving the utmost goodness potential you can reach without the need to bow under senseless political currents. Coming from a society ranked amongst the highest in equality scale, it comes naturally to me. Frankly, I was writing about my experiences while I was traveling around the world for roughly 2 years and using mainly AirBnB for accommodation. Do you really think white people get automatically pass when they try to do anything?
What I think you are talking about and see is more fight for belonging to the upper echelon of society, the ones that seem to make decisions affecting all of us. Well, news for you, vast majority of whites don't belong there. If you also want to be more nasty, i.e. singling out Jews, a historically popular scapegoat nation, another news for you - most of them are poor and uneducated, hence disadvantaged. Simply the goal of all these fights is power and nowadays equality turned into another mean how to acquire power, causing yet another slew of injustices, sadly.
The facts are that certain groups have far more opportunity than others, including access to education, jobs, health care, power in their communities - and now Airbnb rooms, among many other things - not just access to upper echelons (though that is an issue too, because it means these groups lack a seat at the table when decisions are made). The extensive, overwhelming research, and centuries of history show which groups these are.
That doesn't mean there is no other suffering in the world; that begs the question. It means these groups face much greater problems, your unsubstantiated claims notwithstanding. Given the overwhelming evidence, why wouldn't you want to do something about it?
Most of us would love to see the real social justice. There were many whites trying their best to help the rest of the world, often with self-inflicted wounds from their own culture, as well as many whites that wanted to dominate the rest (but were Ottomans, Mongols, Huns, Kushites etc. any better back in their days?)
Look, a few thousands years ago the dominant culture were Egyptian, Babylonian etc. Then there was China, Aztecs, India, Rome, Islam, then enlightened Europe. All those older cultures became zombies on self-inflicted wounds when they couldn't cope with their evolutionary advancement anymore, their mental framework got stale, they probably overly indulged in pleasures their technology allowed them without caring about progress and justice and they went from advanced to weak, allowing themselves to be conquered easily.
Here we are at a wonderful place in history when everyone can seemingly have their words heard. We are also marching towards post-scarcity economy and a single smartphone has a larger computing power than the whole humanity had when we launched into the space. More than ever disadvantaged groups have their say. The previously dominant, white culture, allowed that, working on abolishing slavery, awful crimes and horrible warts plaguing all previous cultures. Why are you still feeling offended? So many people worked so hard on bringing the concept of justice to everyone. Should their successors be persecuted for whatever wrongs you historically feel? How many of those wrongs were self-inflicted by your own culture? When you compare your life in the US, would you exchange it for your native one? Would you apologize to all victims of your ancestors' horrible acts?
When there are some things causing injustice, they should be disbanded, and not new ones erected as a "payback". Please get it out of your system, we would love to see you cooperating on a just world.
It's long, but unsubstantiated and generally factually wrong, including its characterizations of my comment: I don't say most of the things you allege.
I don't divide the world into groups of people based on skin color, and then assign group achievements and faults as if they are a team, and imagine there is some competition or racial Olympics. That premise is the root of the problem. I see individuals and mutual benefit when they do better, not a zero sum competition. The fact - not speculation - is that many of those individuals are suffering from racism.
The thing is that nobody cares if a white male experiences any sort of problems with anyone, but the moment a black person or a woman says something, everybody rushes in. Now we see white males in blue collar jobs are committing suicide in huge numbers and many checked out of society completely (unemployment + gaming, porn) as they don't see any point to be involved as they are invisible to women in their 20s and get automatic scorn whenever they are accused of something. There are now many women-only places/clubs but the same is denied to men in the US. Does this really seem fine to you?
You're attributing to me emotions I did not express. Obviously, because I didn't offer an opinion on anything in my question.
>There are now many women-only places/clubs but the same is denied to men in the US.
This is demonstrably false, and can be disproved with Google in seconds.
But I'll surmise you aren't all that concerned with the existence of women's social clubs as a counterpoint to men's social clubs. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and guess that your concerns are likely about something more substantive.
I was just asking where one can objectively measure the severe disadvantage of white men in America. A disadvantage so profound surely would be obvious in data of education, political power, wealth, or employment, or the like.
Your contention is at odds with what I would have guessed based on having lived my life in America. So: what publicly-available data set would you use to exhibit this severe disadvantage?
I am not an American, so it's only tangentially related to my life (in a way that my part of the world is going to experience it 10 years later), or that I have to be more careful not to accidentally trigger anyone on my next Hawaiian vacation (like last time I visited Old Lahaina Luau and some black woman from NYC wanted to kick me out of the place I paid for because she wanted to sit there - is being a "black woman" the secret superpower to do crazy irresponsible things with no penalty nowadays?).
Anyway, possible interesting stats for your further research:
- average/median earning of single women in their 20s comparing to the same group of men in officially recognized fields (no sugar daddy incomes etc.)
- ratio of female/male university graduates
- number of male-only clubs forced to close or allow female participation comparing to the number of female-only clubs
Frankly, I couldn't care less about men-/women-only clubs, I just don't understand why former are scorned upon and latter are celebrated. I come from a part of Europe that was pretty equal for a long time so seeing this happening seems extreme to me.
This may explain a lot. Perhaps our current media exports are offering a misleading perception. I would suggest you look at the public data, as it might be a better basis for forming conclusions. I would wager a beer that actual data (NB: or any time spent in pretty much any corridor of power in America) will not support the conclusion that white men in America are disadvantaged relative to other groups.
Also: we don't actually have all that many social clubs here; they are in some ways a relic from the past. I would suggest they are opening up to black people and women as a result of self-interested response to market forces. The types of clubs that denied admission to black people until well into the 1990s aren't the types of clubs that cave because Huffington Post ran an unflattering piece.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Of course this is a dead letter because of a misinterpretation of the Commerce Clause, but there it is. If the Constitution didn't literally give the federal government a power, it doesn't have that power.
Haha there's a charitable interpretation. Actually my second-favorite amendment is the Fourteenth, precisely because it knocks the states down a few pegs, and gives the federal government the power to enforce that. (In addition to, you know, extending citizenship to everyone...) I doubt old George would have agreed with that.
[EDIT:] to avoid confusion, the First is my favorite.
What I meant by that was individual liberty and the ability to make your own choices and decisions.
Government meddling in that in this case is forcing people to do something they are uncomfortable with simply because they paid money while simultaneously running the risk of legal action if at any point you want to abort the transaction.
The most basic example is akin to forcing somebody to sign a contract without knowing who they are signing it with.
The law was actually far more intrusive back then than it is today. For example, you might be shocked to discover that Jim Crow laws actually mandated discrimination in sexual relationships!
The closest we've come to trying this kind of thing is the present day, where at least sexual relationships have been deregulated. (This one is a biggie for me, I discriminate pretty strongly against white women and think the government should not restrict my freedom in that way.)
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 24 hrs rule' which got changed to a 'accept booking within 24hrs rule'. That change gave me little time to work with guests (especially first timers). I can't tell you how many times first-timers ask me questions as if i were hotel, "do you mind if i check in at 2am after my international flight gets in?" No.
2.) Removing pictures increases anonymity for guest and risks for hosts. Transparency is great for building trust. I could usually tell if a guest was going to good by the amount of information they shared about themselves. I hated it when first-time guest would reach out with zero information about themselves or a picture. It's like guests want to know everything about me, but they get to hide behind a veil of secrecy.
3.) Increasing the use of "instant-book" favors professionals as opposed to part-time home-sharers. Since I rented out my entire personal apt during work trips (never did room shares), I wanted to be damn sure a guest would be respectful of my home, so I needed to work with them (see #1). However, people who have a full-time airbnb place don't really care as much. They have a bunch of cheap ikea furniture and no personal belongings to worry about. This is in sharp contrast to what Airbnb claims to be, especially in SF. Since I have more to care about and more risk, the new policies do not work for me.
4.) Hosts aren't always forth coming with information NOR do they read the fine print before booking. I can't tell you how many people expected me to check them in at 2am, have an elevator, child proof my apartment, allow for dogs, and the list goes on and on. Great, now I've got to deal with people who don't bother to follow the rules.
Look, I realize I have a lot of requirements, and you might say "well maybe I shouldn't be airbnb-ing" But my apartment was great for the right person and I was happy to share it. And I was almost always able to find the right person. I think Airbnb is great when its about finding the right place for the right person. I'm sorry that everyplace can be right for everyone. My apt is not a "one-size-fits-all" hotel and since they are forcing me to be one, I am no longer using the service.
Honestly, AirBnB is bidding you good riddance. They obviously want to be some big corporation competing with Marriott, Holiday Inn, etc. They aren't going to get there with people like you. They're going to get there by clearing the way for the professional "hosts" who are, in reality, setting up unlicensed hotels in apartment buildings.
If AirBnB is going to get big, they need to have anti-discrimination policies. Without such policies, the states and federal government will sue them into oblivion--whether any laws were actually broken or not. Civil rights groups will boycott AirBnB and any TV network that carries their advertising. The list of hurts goes on and on.
So there is no future for hosts like you who want to vet people. Vetting allows too much room for all sorts of unsavory discrimination. More importantly for AirBnB though, vetting gets in the way of AirBnB making money and competing with hotel chains.
This company dreams of being the "Uber of hotels." You're in their way. You're like the old-timey Lyft driver who wanted people riding in front and doing the fist bump. That's over.
The sort of hosting you want to do is going to have to route through some informal mechanism, like an email list or word of mouth or some web forum, or maybe a random Facebook group. It's incompatible with a Bigcorp that wants to make money, lots of money.
> The sort of hosting you want to do is going to have to route through some informal mechanism, like an email list or word of mouth or some web forum, or maybe a random Facebook group. It's incompatible with a Bigcorp that wants to make money, lots of money.
Craigslist's sublet/temporary section is a pretty good place for this. I've found it works pretty well being able to rent a place for a few weeks while the owner is out of town/country. Obviously unlike AirBnB there is no false pretense of security, but that's fair enough seeing as how you (as owner/lessor) have the greatest incentive to look after that.
What percentage of their current revenue do you think comes from large, commercial operations (as opposed to single family homes ... maybe a side property being rented out)? No idea myself, but I would imagine comfortably under 50%....so it's hard to believe AirBnB aiming for this kind of pivot on the customer base, especially the one that got them to where they are today.
They are skating to where the puck is headed. Their future is unlicensed hotels. The "express booking" underscores this. No one renting out a room in his house wants it rented based on an instaclick. Lyft started out with the huge pink mustache and front seat rides. They ditched that stuff fast too.
Doesn't matter what the percentage is today, it's what it will be in the future...
It's a lot easier to say, "buy a second home or apt and make some money renting it out" than it is to say "make some money by letting a stranger go through all your personal shit. And if you don't, you're racist"
"Home sharing" is over. Airbnb is all about being a broker for unlicensed mini-hotels now.
I prefer renting places that are lived in homes, but the occupant is away. Unfortunately these kinds of properties are rare.
Before arriving in some foreign place I want to know if the host is reliable. The host wants to know if they can trust me to be in their home. Ratings are helpful but no substitute for finding out what type of person you're dealing with. Even though I'm a pretty private person I prefer connecting with hosts on social media beforehand. I definitely want a voice call, even though all the expectation setting needs to be in writing on airbnb.
Both sides need to show themselves and accept being judged. Hosts need to be able to refuse without needing to justify their decisions. Otherwise there can never be enough trust to share valuable properties.
I agree with everything you're saying. I spent a great deal of effort getting to know my guests as best I could. A lot of my guests and I added each other on social media after and have reached out to me to come stay again.
I only spoke on the phone with one guest before hand and we ended up connecting very well. Her and her daughter were first timers and I walked them through the whole process. Her feedback said something like she considers me family now haha
Airbnb has basically stripped that ability away from me. So thanks Airbnb. I'll stop being the racist you've incorrectly accused me of being.
/oh and for the record, I am Latino/Native American.
The thing that confuses me about AirBnB "vetting" is that I used VRBO for many years without any sign of vetting required. It was only on my first AirBnB that I had to fill in a "profile", explain why I was a "good" renter, etc.
Why do AirBnB hosts need all this when VRBO hosts did not?
In fact I've usually had to try to negotiate with them over the phone as they suddenly jack up the price to twice what they advertised, or tell me that they made a mistake in the listing and they weren't actually available.
I don't even know why; I'm not part of any class that would usually be discriminated against. Maybe I sound young on the phone.
> I think it's unreasonable to say that all home-sharers must act like hotels.
First, Airbnb hosts are not "sharing" their homes. They're renting them out for financial profits.
Second, the name is literally Airbnb, as in "Bed and Breakfast". Most B&Bs don't get anything close to that amount of information, and it's illegal for them to discriminate on the basis of protected classes, just like hotels.
> First, Airbnb hosts are not "sharing" their homes. They're renting them out for financial profits.
Respectfully, I disagree. If you allow someone to stay in the home you live in while you're away, to sleep in your bed, to cook in your kitchen, drink from your cups, and so on, you are most definitely sharing your home. It doesn't matter if you profit or not for that to be true.
I know a lot of Airbnb hosts aren't doing this. They're renting out places they never lived in. There's a big difference.
I, personally, am not arguing that discrimination isn't wrong (though some other threads have clarified the actual legality). I'm just saying that the methods Airbnb has chosen to prevent said discrimination also make it impossible for me to host and those methods are shaky at best.
It may not be racism, but it's certainly discrimination, in the sense that you are selecting who gets to conduct business with you based upon subjective criteria.
> 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 any other regulations that apply to hotels located where the Airbnb hosts are located.
That was my line of thinking. Just like being an independent contractor... as AirBnb adds more rules and processes (aka control), there is going to be a threshold where their liability explodes and then could implode the business.
The question comes... is that an established line that they can stop just short of OR is that a great big grey zone that will require a lawsuit to better define?
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.
> I don't know if this is really a tractable problem.
You don't need a perfect solution in order to do something. They can improve the situation. And also it's important that they make clear it's unacceptable and take action: It's like bullying; people passively watching send the message that the behavior is socially permitted. People are hard wired to follow social norms.
> they're going to have significant discrimination problems as long as people are discriminatory, i.e., basically forever.
Discrimination isn't forever. Protestants and Catholics, not to mention Irish and Italians, and many others used to riot against each other in the U.S. When John F Kennedy, a Catholic, was elected President it was actually a big deal. Now nobody even notices when a Mormon runs. Look at discrimination against women, Jews, LGBTQ, and many others. It takes too long, but the history is very optimistic.
I even hear that most American voters voted for a black man - twice - only a generation after he wouldn't have been allowed to even sleep in a hotel in much of the country. (Could he get an Airbnb room now, if he weren't recognized? I sure don't want to go back to those days.)
I can think of one way AirBNB could attempt to persuade hosts: publish data showing that there is no correlation between any of [race, religion, national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age] and the likelihood of a guest being a poor guest (ending in an insurance claim, or maybe just a very bad review).
If the data shows that there is no correlation, they can prove hosts have no reason to let their prejudices get in the way of making more money hosting more people.
If data does show a correlation, don't hosts have good reason to discriminate, just as insurers do (against say, age)?
The usual arguments against your point have been well argued before, but I will repeat it here, because people all too often trip up on the seeming unassailable logic of your position:
Men are statistically more likely to commit violent crimes than women, and 100% of crime is committed by humans. Would you suggest that "men" and "humans" as classes should be discriminated against as a result?
What if, statistically, there were some weird factor, like the shape of ears, that correlated more strongly with the quality of a guest. Would you base your hosting decisions on that?
You don't think it too neat and simplistic that, with race being something that speaks to the deepest prejudices in people, "data" has been found and collected that appears to support such prejudices?
Statistically, poor people might be a net drain on economy. Do you suggest we get rid of them?
> Would you suggest that "men" and "humans" as classes should be discriminated against as a result?
Yes, if you can sell a night's stay for the same price to a houseplant as you can to a human, it would seem wisest to board the houseplant at every opportunity.
> What if, statistically, there were some weird factor...
I would like an AI to make all my booking picks for me, but not one that aims to maximize diversity or exclusivity, simply one that minimizes risk. If it turned out the AI found a strong correlation with ear shape and risk, or favorite color and risk, that would be just fine, as long as it is correct.
I have no such AI, all I have are some mere heuristics gathered from the work of actuarial scientists (Insurers). So if a twenty-something male and a fifty-something female both request the same night, why wouldn't I choose the older female every single time?
(Note that I am discriminating against my very own demographic, not that my feelings play any part in this, I'm simply attempting to minimize risk when booking, when there's an option to do so.)
Yes - it's legal to discriminate by sex. If you go out looking for apartments in a major city, you will see many "women-only" options, probably for some of the reasons you listed. However, I don't think the arguments for sexual prejudice apply to racial prejudice.
This is not true; 100% of crimes are committed by persons, but both natural persons (humans) and juridical persons (corporations, etc.) commit crimes, and its possible for the latter to commit a crime when none of the individual owners or agents are, as individuals, guilty of a crime.
> Would you suggest that "men" and "humans" as classes should be discriminated against as a result?
But, the latter kind of discrimination is the reason that the claim about humans committing 100% of crime is approximately (that is, but for crimes by juridical persons) true -- only humans commit crimes because acts are only criminal when committed by humans, so discrimination against humans is the reason for rather than a response to the condition you identify.
> If data does show a correlation, don't hosts have good reason to discriminate, just as insurers do?
Well, they have an incentive to discriminate, but not necessarily a morally good reason. Regarding insurance: Being middle-aged is something we all get a chance at. Being white or female is not.
If a restaurant owner can show that blacks do not tip as well as whites, is it acceptable for him to always seat blacks at the back of the restaurant?
I don't think the point is to convert racists as much as it is to prove to non-racists that the general actuarial tables don't apply specifically to AirBnB's renters.
I know that it can feel intractable, because change for the better is way slower then I'd like it to be, compared to technological progress.
Discrimination may never be eliminated completely, but it can be reduced so that there are less incidents and a lower impact. And while some issues will be harder to prevent, others may be low hanging fruit.
It's like software bugs. We may never be free of them, but we can and do build better and better systems, tools, patterns and mentalities for increasing awareness and reducing bugs.
Nextdoor was able to reduce racial profiling with some software changes that increased awareness of possible racial bias and asked for additional details beyond race when people reported incidents.
If software is eating the world, I bet it can take a fair chunk out of racial discrimination rates (or any discrimination) if correctly applied.
At the end of the day, you can try to make a difference, or you can refuse to.
If they do, then they're going to have significant discrimination problems as long as people are discriminatory, i.e., basically forever.
People can improve over time if they're nudged. People used to think slavery was ok, and attitudes changed. The majority used to think gay marriage should be banned, and attitudes changed. Small groups need to take a stand, and change big groups.
To take a moral stand will ultimately cost Airbnb in the short term, so they should be lauded and supported for it. (Some people may choose to not open up their homes if they aren't allowed to discriminate)
You could easily deny racists/sexists/whateverists this information by not forwarding the name or pictures of the person trying to book. You get to see all their reviews, but not what they look like.
Airbnb's model is to provide very limited oversight. If they have to support these types of grievances to any sort of regulatory standard, it's going to kill their business model because it means they will need to increase overhead with compliance systems. Humans are still way smarter than any AI automated system, so even the dumbest humans will be able to outsmart them unless they have people handling the complaints.
> since having someone stay in your home is a very personal thing and a huge risk.
I'd be interested in what % of rooms booked on AirBnB are actually people staying at some person's personal home with them and what % is rental properties, real bed and breakfasts, etc. I don't have any data but my impression is that it's mostly commercial renting by volume/$.
> having someone stay in your home is a very personal thing and a huge risk.
Yes, but a huge number of AirBnBs are de facto hotels. And hotels mitigate risk with insurance and can't (and shouldn't) discriminate. There's nothing personal about running a hotel (or a whole chain of them as evidenced by the number of properties being managed/run by some AirBnB hosts).
That reminds me that I dislike employment anti-discrimination laws too. I suggest a compromise to apply them only to things like manual labor where employees are commodities for example.
I think the concern remains that the algorithm may be optimized for someone's ideology and not the safety of the host and his property. Barring that, I'm sold.
The idea of forcing owners to let people who are not compatible, stay with them, is ridiculous.
I'm Indian and smell of curry (probably... at least a few times a month). If someone hates the smell of curry, they should be allowed to blanket disallow Indians from staying.
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 to prove they are an out-of-town traveler. At the end of the day, the owner should have the final word on their house.
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.
What do you feel Airbnb should have done about it?
I haven't tried to use it before, so I'm not sure about the process, however it seems to me that a homeowner is in no different of a position than a hotelier.
It would make sense that your price contains the cost of insurance, and that your own rules / t&c's govern the guests stay.
Surely the recourse is a civil case against the guest rather than against airbnb?
I doubt any hotel could sue booking.com for the actions of a guest
And don't forget scale. When I'm pushing thousands of people through my place in a year, I can plan for certain events and budget for them. An individual can be wiped out by a bad roll of the dice.
> I mean, it's the hotelier's responsibility to get insurance.
Yes, its a requirement to be open.
> Is there no way for an Airbnb host to get the identity of their guest?
I've never used Airbnb so I don't know, but Airbnb hosts do not have the same legal protection as a hotel and they might actually be in violation of local and state laws plus any lease agreements they are a party to.
The article says that one way AirBnB is handling racial discrimination is to "accelerate the use of instant bookings, which lets renters book places immediately without host approval." It's not AirBnB's goal, but as a side effect it would affect bobjordan, so it is relevant.
(edit: it would depend on how they implement more instant booking. If they just encouraged renters to use it (but could they just encourage and still stop discrimination?), people like bobjordan could just opt out).
The skeptic in me says that pushing Instant Bookings is their primary goal as it lets them be closer to how hotels book. The discrimination angle is a great way to roll it out because it solves a another problem for them.
What's relevant is that AirBnB is against the Freedom of Owners to select who stays at their place. In the end Owners should have the final word, no matter what, certainly not AirBnB.
1) AirBnB has a history of poor support for hosts that have troublesome renters.
2) AirBnB does a terrible job screening renters.
3) This could be easily used against a host improperly. I had a group of sorority girls that wanted to book my house. They told me they had almost 40 women so I declined. I don't have a problem with women but this could be used against me in a legal battle. You have to discriminate as a host. If 10 young guys wanted to book my house too my radar would be off that they MIGHT be there for a party. It has nothing to do with being a bigot against age or gender but minimizing risk which AirBnB does not help with.
If they enforce instant book I could be stuck with 40 women at my house in a city I'm legally approved for advertising and sleeping 14 (it's based on 200 sq ft per person). AirBnB doesn't have all the local rules.
4) Let's say someone is bigoted and they own a house - if you're a potential renter in a group they dislike, do you really want to shell over money to them and stay at their home? Also, what are the chances that the bigoted host is going to provide a good experience or good customer support when required?
These booking sites are taking more money and providing less. They want to drop your ADR like Uber wanted to drop fares for wider appeal. And they avoid all liability. It's getting more and more unfriendly for hosts.
Let's say someone is bigoted and they own a company - if you're a potential employee in a group they dislike, do you really want to spend your days in their workplace? Also, what are the chances that the bigoted employer is going to provide a good experience or career progression when required?
...so we're cool with dropping employment discrimination laws too?
If you choose to make your home a place of business, you must comply with business rules.
They're providing a service in return for money, they have to declare the earnings from such for tax purposes... there is no line here. A psychiatrist who operates out of a home office has no legal right to discriminate based on race, either.
The laws of the United States disagree with you. Unless you are renting out part of your own residence, you do not have the freedom to select who stays there on the basis of race.
The problem is that it is. Any such rule of thumb is discrimination. Even if you had some magical way of knowing whether given guest will destroy your apartment with perfect certainty, using that to filter guests will still be discrimination.
Trying to eliminate discrimination always ends up by removing any kind of ability to choose your customer.
This is either largely unrelated to the original post or intensely problematic. You would do well to reconsider what you have written here and how it relates to the topic at hand.
I posted an example above but instant book doesn't force a potential renter to be screened which makes it easier for destructive guests to book. If you're throwing a party, would you rather instant book or have to chat with the host?
As my example, if a renter instant books and is going to bring 40 people to a place you are legally approved locally for sleeping 14, other neighbors can report you to the city and you could be fined or lose your license to rent.
So you can have issues with instant bookers even if they aren't destructive.
> What evidence is there that instant booking guests are more destructive than others?
OP isn't saying that they are, they're saying that they now want to apply a new screen (out-of-town-ness) that they think is evidence of not being destructive, but would be unable to do so if Airbnb forced everyone to allow instant bookings.
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't have handrails)... It's a risk if the person then has an accident...
Similarly in term of age, I would not rent to couples with young children because it's too risky.
So, it's discrimination but it's mostly because this is not an hotel, it's an apartment in which I live part of the year and it's not adapted for disabled people or couples with young children because I'm not in those categories.
That said, as someone whose wife is asian, I fully understand the problem. It's annoying and painful when people discriminate based on race.
In our case, we show both my face and wife face on our Airbnb profile photo because we prefer to have a host refuse on the basis of wife's nationality than to give money or stay at the house of a racist host. I've had a bad experience before that with a host who was nice to me when I met him and then wasn't as nice 5 minutes later once my wife arrived... The fact that he earned money from our stay galls me...
> a host who was nice to me when I met him and then wasn't as nice 5 minutes later once my wife arrived
I don't doubt the presence of racism in our society, but this seems like an overly subjective and crude way to label someone a racist. Off the top of my head they could be threatened by the other's attractiveness (surprisingly common), they find the person awkward to speak with or annoying/ out of touch, they are shy/uncomfortable around social situations with multiple people, they could even be a minsogynst, they could have terrible social skills, or a hundred other reasons why someone might give off bad vibes to someone else.
How do you differentiate so assuredly between "this person just doesn't like this person and/ or the situation" and "this person is a racist"?
I've lived in countries where I felt like I got a ton of looks/ distance, and if someone was rude to me, I found myself jumping to "racism" a lot, a lot of the x-pats did. Yet when I come back home I still encounter the same kind of rudeness but suddenly it's not racism anymore, it's just people being assholes. Not sure where I'm going with this, it just does bother me that people are so quick to pull the racism card in such ambiguous, subjective situations, especially when it's against people who are younger than my grandparent's generation, who in the US at least are a lot less likely to actually be racist.
Well, when the guy says "Make sure to clean up, it's not like in your country where everything's dirty", it's pretty obvious :-)
It's also in Europe in a smaller city and the guy was middle aged... I find that in smaller cities in Europe people tend to be more racist than in bigger cosmopolitan cities.
It's fine to analyze potential racism experienced by oneself in this fashion, but it really is out of bounds to analyze potential racism experienced by other people in this way. Perhaps that isn't fair to those of us who rarely experience potential racism, but so what?
Other people's perceptions are no less prone to error and misjudgment than one's own. It's not polite to challenge someone's interpretation of their own experiences, but to declare it "out of bounds" or somehow morally wrong is a cheap shaming tactic.
The person I was responding to was not the experiencer of the racism, as you meant it. Yes this is a good guideline in general, but there are also times when probing further is necessary for an actual meaningful discussion.
I agree with your general observations with respect to misunderstanding and assumptions. I just don't see how the questions you asked could lead to edifying answers. It is a mistake to concentrate on particulars like this, and would have been even if OP agreed with you rather than responding with a dispositive contradictory detail.
My comment was addressed to the HN readership in the way that most are, it's not just about OP's response. Problems with criteria for labeling someone as racist in ambiguous, subjective situations bears some importance within our dialog on racism. Saying it's out of bounds to raise issues like this, apriori, will not improve this dialog.
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.
The main thing, is that I'm not a professional renter. The primary use of the apartment is for myself almost half of the year. I also rent more than half of the time outside of airbnb on Homeaway...
In the jurisdiction where I'm renting, there's no requirements for handrails. The requirements for short terms rental are basically the same as the requirements for renting an apartment long term and not all apartments are disabled friendly... It's also in an historical district, even if we wanted to we would never get the permit to install an elevator...
Also, I've never said I wouldn't accept old people. If they have no disabilities that would present a risk for them, they're welcome.
If I owned a hotel, I would have rooms with disabled access of course. But, it's different when you're renting the apartment that is also your habitation (which is the original purpose of Airbnb)...
Now, that said, I fully support laws that force businesses to accommodate people with disabilities. I also think that any new buildings should be built with this in mind. But are we going to destroy historic old buildings because they don't conform to the current regulations?
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.
My comments are far from an attack; an attack would have been more than summarizing his comments in 2 lines and then pointing out there was a discrepancy.
I don't know where you got the idea that I was suggesting anyone should 'just drill anywhere' from ?
As an old person or a disabled person, looking on AirBnB, I can see what the apartment has and how it is laid out (provided good pictures and description are provided).
Being old or disabled does not stop me being mentally competent to decide for myself whether I'm capable of climbing stairs or negotiating the apartment. It is actually a very offensive and discriminatory thing to suggest either of these personal attributes make me mentally incompetent and this is the core of what makes such discrimination offensive - and illegal - in many jurisdictions around the world.
If there is a legal requirement to have safety rails on stairs (or any other regulation), saying the building is X years old is not an excuse for failure to comply. If you're worried about damage being caused in trying to fit them yourself, you hire a professional to do it instead and then it's their job to ensure the building is still sound after the installation. You're operating what is essentially a business, so costs like that are reasonable business expenses to offset against your profits and the result is you get an improved, safer, house for you and guests and essentially get the guests to pay for it, making you ahead.
> If there is a legal requirement to have safety rails on stairs (or any other regulation), saying the building is X years old is not an excuse for failure to comply.
Of course it is. Otherwise every time a new building code gets published, the entire city suddenly has to remodel. This might be acceptable for stuff like stair handrails, but is totally ridiculous for stuff like electrical connections. You really gonna make everybody change their electrical service and rip all the wire out of their home?
In theory it would be nice to be able to go into every building and expect certain features to be present. In practice it would be impossible.
OP said "The idea of the host (who was prejudice against OP's wife) receiving my money was galling".
OP wasn't complaining about the discrimination, he was complaining about _doing business with the person who discriminated_.
Wildly different things.
Laws (or rules) don't exist in a vacuum, and blindly following them is dumb. If a company rolls out a bad rule, you can either follow it, ignore it, or try to change it.
It seems like a sensible statement to make? We're talking about renting out owner occupied apartments for a limited amount of time during the year. Some properties just can't be modified to accommodate people with certain (certain, not all) disabilities. And neither would some people want to, if you're only renting them out a few months a year.
There are plenty of hotels which are "adults only" for any number of reasons and I have not heard a complaint that these are discrimination.
Even under the US ADA, only hotels built after 1993 are required to provide compliant facilities. That means there are actual 100% for-profit hotels which are out of compliance. Perhaps frustration is more appropriately directed at them, or the provisions of the ADA than an individual trying to share his personal residence in a practical manner?
I'm blind. Would you not rent this property to me because you fear for my safety therein?
Would it make a difference if I've said I've skied, biked solo, rock-climbed? If so, why should I have to do so when others don't, and are trusted to make up their own minds as to whether your property works for them?
Do you feel more confident than I am in determining my own limits?
Disclosure: I've been denied many opportunities because an unqualified person determined what was and was not safe/possible/healthy/OK for me to do, and find it upsetting to be denied my agency because of it. Glad to see these changes landing. If I've misinterpreted your post then I do apologize, but it looks like you're making choices and denying opportunities for capable adults, and I'm not OK with that if that's the case.
It is not about your safetly alone. It is about his liability. If there is something unsafe in his apartment, and you get hurt, you can sue him. He just doesn't want to get sued.
Exactly, that's why before I accept, I'd call my insurance to make sure that I do not have any legal risks in accepting him. If I accept him and then there's an accident and the insurance tells me that I'm not covered because my apartment doesn't have x safety features then it's a huge issue for me.
I'd actually most likely rent it to you after I've made sure that you really know what you're getting and I've phoned my insurance to make sure it's not an issue...
I'm slightly biased though since my flat mate in university was legally blind and I've seen him be extremely independent.
It's mostly for people who have difficulties moving that I couldn't rent it since there's a lot of stairs with no elevators, the stairs are old and not that stable and inside the house, the stairs have no handrails to support oneself and the sidewalks of the street of the apartment are extremely narrow, badly maintained with people driving very fast in that street. I love the area and the place and it has a lot of rustic charm but it is dangerous and inconvenient.
I mean when I broke my leg and had it in a cast, I rented an apartment in the same city because it was to dangerous to access my own apartment.
Now, outside of renting my apartment, if I were hiring, I would certainly never discriminate against anyone who is disabled or anyone else.
Then you and I would likely have a problem. I wouldn't let a dog into my house because of family members with severe asthma and allergy issues. My medical needs take priority over yours in my house.
> Similarly in term of age, I would not rent to couples with young children because it's too risky.
I am not sure age matters with children at all since they don't have legal status and can't enter into contracts etc. So on that basis alone it's a non issue. Meaning it wouldn't be discrimination.
In other words you can't get in trouble for refusing to hire someone who is 10 years old because legally you can't hire them anyway. Likewise if there is some other rule w/o respect to age discrimination (lodging) since they have no legal status (and the parent would be renting) it really wouldn't matter that age was the issue. Would be the same really as "I don't rent to people who wear yellow shirts".
To play devils advocate your are saying some personal discrimination is okay because of what you feel are valid arguments, but other people should not be able to have their own set of rules for their discrimination?
>Airbnb said it would also accelerate the use of instant bookings, which lets renters book places immediately without host approval.
Maybe I'm naive but it seems like that policy would be perceived by hosts as extremely hostile. Homeowners have both a financial and emotional vested interest in their homes so letting strangers book it without a cursory check isn't going to work. Having no checks would work for real estate holders who aren't emotionally attached to their homes but not homeowners who live in the same house they rent.
Even if it's irrational and discriminatory, homeowners want to maintain some semblance of control over who stays at their home. It's the homeowner who has to pay for damages/misbehavior -- whether directly or by home insurance deductibles and higher premiums. (As I understand it, AirBnb's coverage guarantee only kicks in
after the homeowner exhausts his personal insurance.)
Does anyone know the bulk of AirBnb's business revenue? Is it homeowners renting out a spare bedroom? Or is it people renting out non-owner occupied beach houses and lofts?
EDIT ADD: Every time an AirBnb thread about racism comes up, many commenters are confused or ignorant about what the law actually says. To copypaste a previous comment:
Those anti-discrimination laws don't apply to hosts' private homes or bedrooms.[1] Paraphrase of law: "All persons shall be entitled ..., and accommodations of any place of public accommodation,..., without discrimination ... other than ... a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent ... which is actually occupied by the proprietor ... as his residence"
In other words, if a homeowner has a spare bedroom across the hall from her 13-year-old son's room, and doesn't want to rent to transgender, black, or 65-year-old guests, it is legal for her to discriminate on those attributes.
On the other hand, if the AirBnb host is renting out a non-owner-occupied beach house, the discrimination laws would apply.
> In other words, if a homeowner has a spare bedroom across the hall from her 13-year-old son's room, and doesn't want to rent to transgender, black, or 65-year-old guests, it is legal for her to discriminate on those attributes.
But its not legal to use a brokering service to arrange the rental if you discriminate, so there goes AirBnB for that use.
>But its not legal to use a brokering service to arrange the rental if you discriminate, so there goes AirBnB for that use.
Well, since Airbnb has been around for 8 years and no states' attorney generals nor courts have ruled Airbnb to definitively be a "broker", _why_ would a homeowner think she's breaking any anti-discrimination laws when screening prospective renters for her spare bedroom?
I don't know about Airbnb's status in other countries but as far as the USA goes, that's the current situation. (There's one lawsuit filed by a property management in NYC to reclassify Airbnb as a "broker" but that's working its way through the court system and unresolved.)
Also, let's do a thought experiment. Let's say Airbnb changes some things to avoid the "broker" label -- or -- the states definitively rule that they don't meet the definition of "broker". If so, this outcome still wouldn't be realistic: "Well, Ms Smith's loft discriminates against black people but we're all ok with it now because Airbnb got a favorable ruling that they are not a broker."
Attacking the "broker" angle is a red herring. Even if Airbnb loses the broker reclassification, another service that let people discriminate on exactly who stays in their spare bedroom would fill the void. The underlying discrimination remains.
> since Airbnb has been around for 8 years and no states' attorney generals nor courts have ruled Airbnb to definitively be a "broker"
I said "brokering service" rather than "broker" for a reason, as a shorthand for a broad class of services (the exclusion from the fair housing exemption extends to any use of rental or sales services of a broker, agent, or any person in the business or rental or sales; this is much broader than classification as a "broker" specifically.)
> If so, this outcome still wouldn't be realistic: "Well, Ms Smith's loft discriminates against black people but we're all ok with it now because Airbnb collects money differently therefore they are no longer a broker."
It would be perfectly realistic, and is, in fact, the status of lots of small direct-by-owner rentals advertised through services that are more listing than brokering services, which do in fact discriminate on axes that would otherwise be prohibited. Units that do not use brokering services and fit within the size and other requirements of the fair housing exemption in federal law are (under federal law) perfectly legal. (If they don't fall into a state-law exemption, which are often narrower, they may run afoul of state fair housing laws, though.)
>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-by-owner rentals advertised through services that are more listing than brokering services, which do in fact discriminate on axes
What would Airbnb have to change to meet that definition? To me, the homeowners have to create their own listings and upload their own photos. It's not like real estate agents who create listings in the proprietary and closed MLS system on behalf of clients.
(Regardless of your answers, I'm going to ask some Airbnb hosts and see if interacting with Airbnb to them feels more like contracting with broker services or more like an listing an electronic classifieds ad. It's a fascinating psychological angle.)
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 newspaper classified or bulletin board.
> Is it the 3% fee collected upfront instead of commissions being billed monthly like Ebay?
No, I can't see that that would be in any way relevant.
> Therefore, if Airbnb collected money differently to avoid the label of being a brokering "service", would the outrage about discrimination really be avoided?
If they changed what they collected money for, sure, but that's not a scheduling thing, its what the basis of payment is and what services they are providing.
> What would Airbnb have to change to meet that definition?
As I see it, they'd need to act as a listing venue rather than a deeply-involved intermediary in the rental transaction. Their fundamental business model, IOW, would have to change.
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.
> This is why going after the "broker service" angle would be a weak approach in changing homeowners' minds about discrimination.
I'm not suggesting it as a way to change homeowner's minds, which isn't even something I'm interested in doing [0]. I'm interested in enforcing the existing law prohibiting discrimination. If hosts wish to discriminate, I'd prefer they'd be limited to doing so only in the limited circumstances and manners permitted by law, and not willy-nilly in defiance of the law.
[0] Okay, its something I'm interested in doing, but its a longer-term, less-immediately-critical goal that's pretty much irrelevant to anything I've said about the issues in this thread, except in this footnote.
>I'm interested in enforcing the _existing law_ [...]
I understand but your opinion is predicated on your particular reading of the "brokering services"[0] law you cited previously. That extensive enumeration of brokers/agents/salesman/employee is a person that does the matching work on behalf of the client. If other reasonable people don't think Airbnb's "self-service" approach is brokering, then the word "existing" in "existing law" doesn't apply.
Likewise, if one downloads PDFs of legal forms from a website to sell a car or incorporate a business and fills out the form himeself, that website is not providing "attorney services" -- even though many lawyers might download the same PDF files and fill them out for their clients. (Self-service legal forms != attorney services)
Persuading homeowners to not discriminate by convincing them that Airbnb is a real brokering service seems like too big of a mental hurdle to overcome. (No lawyers are issuing dire warnings to homeowners saying Airbnb is a "brokering service". No court rulings have made the headlines saying Airbnb is a brokering service. Etc) Therefore, they see no "existing law" that applies to them.
[0](A) without the use in any manner of the sales or rental facilities or the sales or rental services of any real estate broker, agent, or salesman, or of such facilities or services of any person in the business of selling or renting dwellings, or of any employee or agent of any such broker, agent, salesman, or person and
> I understand but your opinion is predicated on your particular reading of "brokering services" law you cited previously.
Well, yes, obviously. I was responding to your claim, which was about the utility of the position as a tool to convincing people about whether they ought to discriminate, and pointing out that that wasn't the point.
> That extensive enumeration of brokers/agents/salesman/employee is a person that does the matching work on behalf of the client.
I've done both sales (on both sides) and rentals (on one side) through brokers, and in no case have they performed matching for me, in every case they provided a variety of administrative support services, including assisting in the search for matches (though, in the present case that I am currently working on, I hope they don't need to even do that -- if things go well, the match we handed them at the outset will be the final one.)
Which is to say that I think your idea of what a broker/agent/salesman or any person in the business of selling or renting dwellings does is excessively and unjustifiably narrow.
It wasn't obvious and your previous statement had to be dissected to clarify it. Upthread, you stated the following without any disclaimers of "in my opinion" or "in my interpretation":
>But its not legal to use a brokering service to arrange the rental if you discriminate, so there goes AirBnB for that use.
It certainly sounded definitive but if left alone without further commentary, it's misleading.
That statement depends on how expansively one defines "brokering services". Not everyone agrees with your definition and I further would claim that the majority do not.
>the utility of the position as a tool to convincing people [...], and pointing out that that wasn't the point.
But that is the point. If you want to use an authoritative phrase like "existing law", people have to agree with your intepretation of Airbnb's utility as a "brokering service". If they don't, they believe they still have a legal basis to discriminate.
>I think your idea of what a broker/agent/salesman or any person in the business of selling or renting dwellings does is excessively and unjustifiably narrow.
On the contrary, I think it is your classification of Airbnb as a "brokering service" that is idiosyncratic.
Based on my informal survey of Airbnb renters and landlords, it doesn't seem like the majority agree with you. I ask them "What is Airbnb?" and they say "rental listings" and not "rental brokers".
For people to believe they are breaking the antidiscrimination law because they use brokering services, they need signals from the world such as the states requiring Airbnb to acquire brokerage licenses. (Maybe also add to the process that an Airbnb representative must join the transaction via chat or email to "close" the deal between renter & landlord.) Reading your interpretation of what "brokering service" is not enough.
To recap, the factors you believe Airbnb a brokerage:
The "self-service" is a huge mental block and overrides the commissions payment factor in many minds. The sentiment is: "If I do the work to create the listing, why would Airbnb be the broker? That makes no sense."
The self-service aspect is why some people think of Christie's and Sotheby's as auction house brokers and they "broker a deal" to sell a piece of art ... but nobody thinks of do-it-yourself Ebay as an auction broker. Ebay is auction listings.
What if there was a reputation threshold for a traveller to make an instant booking? Of course it's still not immune to racism or sexism, but it seems that it would provide a decent buffer against it.
You can require guests to go through Airbnb's ID verification process (giving them a copy of your license and/or passport, and connecting at least one social account).
The Airbnb Host Guarantee is a total fraud. I looked into the abyss of worst case predatory corporate behavior when I filed my claim.
I am a big Airbnb fan, both as a host in my New York aparment and as a guest. But when I had my first bad experience with a guest that damaged property (floor, walls) and stole a whole set of expensive cosmetics from a friend that were stored in my bathroom, Airbnb behaved terribly. They basically dragged out the process over a month, demanding more and more “evidence” (a police report, exact list of missing items, photos of damage, quotes from handyman and Amazon list price links were insufficient). They continuously set 48 h “deadlines” for responses nearly every time I got a message, and said if I miss them the case gets closed.
After jumping through all the hoops, they told me they decided to close the case anyway.
This was a shocking experience - I read the terms and of course, there are certain things I didn’t provide (mostly the purchasing receipts for the stolen goods, since I don’t keep those). But the pictures with damages and police report got simply ignored by them.
This was “only” about $3,000, so it’s not worth to hire a lawyer and spend more time on this.
The Airbnb Host Guarantee is definitely a fraud, and Airbnb should be absolutely ashamed for their deceptive advertising.
Here are some more details in case you are interested:
* I had trouble with the guest already when they stayed in my apartment, and complained with Airbnb. Airbnb reviewed the case and had the guest actually pay for additional people they brought over to live there. The Airbnb team responsible for handling problems with the guest while staying there was great.
* After the guests left, we assessed the room and saw all the damage, and realized they had stolen lots of valuable items from the bathroom. I immediately informed Airbnb. They passed the case on to another guy called “Reiko”, and that’s where nightmare started.
Some official correspondence from Airbnb’s Reiko:
“If a host requests compensation through the Host Guarantee program, Airbnb will review the damages to determine if the guest is responsible and if the host qualifies for reimbursement under our terms:www.airbnb.com/terms
If the host qualifies for compensation, Airbnb will take measures to recoup those funds from the guest.”
> So, Reiko told me basically that if the guest doesn’t pay, I don’t get paid. Of course the guest doesn’t pay, he was a crook who stole my stuff.
After 1 months of back and forth, police involvement, handyman reviews and spending hours on this stupid case following Reiko’s instruction, he send me this:
“Thank you for getting in touch with us. We understand that this may have been a difficult and frustrating process.Unfortunately, we did not receive a response from you within 48 hours of our last email, sent on August 7th, as was specifically requested. Therefore, your claim was closed.”
>> The Airbnb host Guarantee states explicitly that a host has 60 days time to SUBMIT the request. I submitted within 24 hours on July 30th, and then Reiko dragged the process out over a month back and forth.
I freaked out given this out-of-control statement and asked Reiko what this is all about. I received this cookie cutter response:
“Thank you so much for following up, I definitely understand how frustrating all of this must be for you.
Whenever a situation like this arises, we advocate for an amicable solution. As a neutral third-party not present during the reservation, we must make a fair decision based on documentation and communication from both host and guest.
Following a full review of all documentation and communication in this case, we reached what we believe to be a fair compromise for both parties. As you may already know, our policies state that we have the final say in any dispute to which we are called upon to mediate. As such, the decision reached in this case is final and cannot be overturned.“
WOW.
Basically, there is no Host Guarantee. Airbnb simply tries to convince the fraudulent guest to pay. If they don’t pay, you (I) are screwed. Airbnb is not going to pay a dime.
This is in clear violation of their own stated terms. It says:
“We’re committed to creating a safe and trusted community around the world. Though property damage is rare, we understand you may need protection. The Host Guarantee will reimburse eligible hosts for damages up to $1,000,000.”
>> What it doesn’t mention is that it’s the guest’s responsibility to pay this $1,000,000.
It also states:
Useful documentation and information that will help process your payment request as quickly as possible include:
photographs of the damage being claimed
a police report for any damage that is over $300 USD
receipts or some alternative evidence of the accurate fair market value or report cost
proof of ownership
any other documentation that you feel will be helpful to processing your request
>> We delivered all of this, but it didn’t help. We didn’t see a single dime.
The bottom line:
Either Reiko is a liar and processed our case in the wrong way, or the Host Guarantee is a fraud. I am pretty sure I would win this in court; but Reiko and Airbnb unfortunately know that it’s not worth my time and money given the small (but still significant) amount of $3,000.
My guess is Airbnb simply assesses your earnings and comes up with a certain limit below that they will just screw you over and say “goodbye, no host guarantee for you” in clear violation with their own terms, since they know you can’t go to court.
I at least wanted to let my friend on Quora know.
Very sad and disillusioned with the “sharing economy”. This is not a friendly startup, but worst case predatory corporate behavior. If you have gone through the same thing, maybe we can file a class action lawsuit.
As a frequent traveler and often last minute booker, I only use Instant Book, particularly for its convenience.
Some hosts will take several days to respond which can drag the normal booking process into a week if you need to exchange a few questions. I just don't have time for that and want booking to be simple.
I found it kind of tricky to deal with AirBnB when I needed it, because my travel partner always booked the AirBnB, because my travel partner already had the rep.
That's what reviews are for, unfortunately as hosts, in the current environment of rapid expansion by AirBnB, it works out to typically 75% of inquiries are from new users with no reviews. So there is very little to go by when accepting people to sleep in your home with you.
But that's not a new thing - I definitely booked places with AirBnB through their "instant" feature more than a year ago. It's clearly advertised as such on selected places, and obviously the home owner has to agree to that system, but it meant that I knew where I was sleeping that night, without having to wait for the host to approve me.
Instant bookings have been going for a while and it's basically a business decision for the host as to whether to accept them. More hassle and risk but more bookings. They probably appeal more to people who are doing airbnb as a business rather than letting their home for a week.
I've always considered it a legitimate request when people want to live with others of the same gender for a shared room in their home.
For example, you especially see this on sites like Craigslist when people are seeking roommates. This policy seems to overturn the ability of hosts to do this. If I were a female in an all female home renting out one room, it would make me uncomfortable. Perhaps other do not see this as an issue in short-term renting, but I do.
Have you considered the fact that whites discriminating against blacks is commonplace in the United States (as well as many other countries) while accounts of whites feeling discriminated against by people of color is much more rare?
Which makes sense, because whites constitute 60+% whereas blacks constitute 13%. Even if everything in the world was exactly equal, including percent of racist whites and blacks, blacks(or really, the group with fewer members) would experience more racism because of the disparity in population numbers.
Right. I have no idea whether it's a majority like it is with whites, but I would also disagree with a claim that very few men feel discriminated against.
Many other commenters imply that since people would flee the platform if they couldn't discriminate, that AirBnB shouldn't have to deal with the problem. It's the opposite. AirBnB is required to deal with the problem. Their challenge is to make it look like they are dealing with the problem (e.g. hire Eric Holder) while not actually dealing with it in any substantive way.
Lots of these new companies have as part of their secret sauce the hiding of racial discrimination and avoiding regulations and fees that their old style competitors can't. once/if the govt cracks down a lot of these valuations must be reimagined
actually this doesn't mean anything - hiring a black person for anti-discriminatory position seems exactly like PR. Hey look, we hired him, we cannot possibly be discriminative, right?
and nobody was talking about airbnb's hiring process here, WTF?
well people should have figured out by now : Airbnb's aren't hotels. And people should be free to deny others staying at their place, for whatever reason. Airbnb can't have it both ways, they know it and this effort will be pure PR.
I dunno; I feel Airbnb is really losing control of their product.
Most recently, I've noticed a lot of listings of great places for awesome prices... but only if you're willing to rent for 12 months continuously, provide your own furniture and pay a security deposit -- which is just a fucking apartment lease. It makes it hard to find "legit" rentals with so much of this kind of spam filling up the listings.
Worse yet, when I went to report such listings (since I'm pretty sure that's not what Airbnb is designed for), I couldn't figure out how to do it in the app. I get that companies want to operate with minimal overhead, but until their listing systems are run by AI that can outsmart unscrupulous humans, it makes their product shittier.
this doesn't make sense - you were looking for short term rental and the search was filled with 12-month rentals? ie the airbnb search is broken or the owners was falsely advertising short term availability when only yearly was available?
The problem is that this is all actually very murky, and at some point someone is going to sue an AirBnB host for discriminating. There's a lot of people saying stuff here, but ultimately liability will be judged and assessed by a court when a case comes up. And to be honest, a lot of these renters are going to look a lot more like independent contractors than anything.
All it will take is one case and judgement against the host, and AirBnB suddenly looks even less attractive. Bad enough your house can get trashed, but for you to lose all your profit having to defend yourself in court or settle out of it won't make it attractive.
Nudging works. Some people are full-on racists, but for many even adding a small hurdle (like having to manually cancel and find an excuse for an instant-booked reservation) is enough to dissuade them without taking away the final say.
They do need to up their game when it comes to pre-validating guests, though, since any bad experience will only act as confirmation for the pre-existing bias.
> And people should be free to deny others staying at their place, for whatever reason.
They are. Once they turn it into a public accommodation - which Title II defines as "any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests" - they don't get to do that any more.
Don't want to let black people stay in your house? Don't put it on AirBnB.
> They are. Once they turn it into a public accommodation - which Title II defines as "any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests" - they don't get to do that any more.
Are all Airbnbs title II rentals ? I don't think so. That's why Airbnb is successful, because it operates at the "edge" of the law, shifting the risk on both clients and hosts.
"any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests, other than an establishment located within a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire and which is actually occupied by the proprietor of such establishment as his residence. "
If the proprietor is not using the rental as his/her residence, it's defined under US law as a "place of public accommodation," in spite of current efforts to pretend that law doesn't exist.
So: not all AirBnB rentals fall under this rubric, but certainly many of them do.
I'm confused by the responses in here so far. How does discriminating based on race, gender, age, etc guarantee that your property will not be damaged?
If you want the access and business that using AirBnb's platform provides then you need to adhere to their rules. Pretty simple. If that's a problem use craigslist or some other service so you can use whatever prejudices you have to screen guests.
I would be very surprised if the probability of a guest damaging your property is not a function of gender, age, and economic class. There is a reason car insurance costs for young male drivers with bad credit are higher.
> How does discriminating based on race, gender, age, etc guarantee that your property will not be damaged?
It doesn't but depending on where you are on the political spectrum it's either called "trust" or "prejudice". That's how people assess personal risk. While a legal hotel has proper insurance, do you really think that's the case for most airbnb rentals? furthermore an hotel manager doesn't have to sleep in the same room/appartement as his guest.
> If you want the access and business that using AirBnb's platform provides then you need to adhere to their rules. Pretty simple
The real question is whether these rules are seriously enforced or not. I bet they aren't, because most hosts are biased, like everybody else and airbnb business strategy is based on shifting risk upon hosts (and guests). If it wasn't the case it would only list legal hotels.
AirBnB places are not hotels. In the end as an Owner you should be free to select whoever you accept, just like you are free to decorate your place the way you wish. It's down to personal preference because it's the Owner's place in the end.
> In the end as an Owner you should be free to select whoever you accept
You generally aren't legally in the US, with very narrow exceptions, especially if you have a commercial service involved with you in arranging the rental. AirBnB doesn't make the laws, but they are bound by them, and are visible enough that simply ignoring them may no longer be tenable.
"Often" is a stretch. I've never seen anything I would classify as a hotel in the US. I have seen them in other countries, e.g. SE Asia, and those were completely legal.
> The homeowner's use of Airbnb is more analogous to listing in the "newspaper classifieds" rather than contracting a human broker.
Unlike discrimination by hosts against renters, discrimination by renters against hosts doesn't seem to be a violation of the fair housing laws of either the United States or any State, so, at least in the US, is less likely to be a legal compliance issue to which their may be liability attached.
'The biases of hosts can be cloaked — for example, one Airbnb listing in Washington states “we cannot accept guests arriving in D.C. by bus or motor coach,” without mentioning race, class or ethnicity — and may be difficult to eradicate.'
"Regrettably,we cannot accept guests arriving in DC by bus or motor coach. If you are travelling in the northeast corridor, especially from New York or Philadelphia, we suggest you take the Amtrak train service."
I really wonder if they have a valid reason (late arrival due to bus delays for instance), but I suppose if it's looks discriminatory that's as bad as being so.
One thing I didn't see is AB&B promoting its business model to affected classes of people. Get more affected classes of people on your platform (i.e. as hosts) and have them lead the way.
Very tricky. Who you allow to stay in your home is a very personal and grave decision and people want as much information about the potential guests as possible. If they were to take this a step further and remove guest pictures altogether, I suspect that you'd see a mass flight to a competing platform.
For people who are renting out their primary home (and especially if they'll be there at the same time as the guest), I don't think it's ever right to challenge their decision to accept or deny a guest.
But someone running a number of units as full-time rentals should be held to anti-discrimination laws.
I've historically had trouble getting people to respond to my lodging requests on AirBNB. I learned quickly to let my (white) wife do the bookings for our family. When I'm traveling on my own, it's just easier (and frequently cheaper) to just check into a traditional hotel.
It's an intractable problem, and I don't see a good way forward for AirBNB.
I have happily rented to people of many races, religions, and nationalities, mixed race and same-sex couples, and so forth. However, I do not want anybody telling me who I must have in my home. My nephew did four tours in Iraq and does not care to have Iraqis in his home, I have fire-code-acceptable windows in my apartment but a physically-handicapped person could not reach them. I rent to Orthodox Jews under a privacy plan but I don't want to be told I must make sweeping accommodations due to a guest's religious observances. I won't rent to teens at all so what if they happen to be Muslim? I don't rent to anyone who can't pass a background check so what if they happen to be Hispanic? My husband and I are in our 70s and carefully vet everyone we invite into our home, and no one is going to ever tell me I can't.
How as a society do we decide appropriate discrimination vs. inappropriate discrimination? We discriminate constantly, every single of us - making choice of this person over that person. Is that wrong? when does it become wrong? is it not something that can be hashed out?
We have had this debate in the US. We determined that that you can discriminate against people for most random reasons, but if you run a public accommodation there are several specific reasons you can't use to discriminate.
Those being race, gender, creed, and sexual orientation I suppose? Still seems rather arbitrary, if I'm being honest. Acting for example; how is casting based on race legal? Or maybe it's not... idk. Interesting topic though.
In May, Gregory Selden, who is African-American, filed a class-action discrimination suit against the company, saying that he had been denied a place to stay because of his race.
Well that's just ridiculous.
AirBnB is a facilitator. They don't make decisions like that. Can they encourage anti-discrimination? Sure. Is it their responsibility? No.
Not necessarily. Certain customers are problematic and can case damage, which is especially possible when you let them occupy your property (the host is the one who ends up paying for repairs, good luck getting it out of the customer).
Usually, in a hotel this problem is fixed by requiring credit card with a high security deposit it check in, such as needing a few hundred dollars for incidentals plus room and tax. This means anyone without a credit card, and anyone without $500+ of available credit isn't allowed to stay. In effect, this doesn't guarantee the hotel payment for any damages, but it keeps out the type of guest that typically cause problems.
> In effect, this doesn't guarantee the hotel payment for any damages, but it keeps out the type of guest that typically cause problems.
So, people with credit cards and a $500+ limit are less likely to cause problems? As someone who dabbled in landlording (never again!) I can tell you that people with money are just as capable of trashing your house as people without money.
As someone who grew up in the hotel business starting with making beds and has dealt with thousands and thousands of people from worldwide, there is a very clear association with a person's access to credit (aka wealth, what kind of culture they grew up in, their level of education), and the likelihood of them causing issues.
It didn't hurt businesses in the American south enough to compel them to stop discriminating. I don't get it either, why would I turn down someone's money because they're black, but lots of people did and whatever economic pain they felt from it was apparently outweighed by the joy of being racist assholes.
One of the major motivations in keeping Jim Crow laws was to prevent economic competition (a "race to the bottom") between whites and non-whites. See also FDR's pro-union/pro-white policies.
Linking to Wikipedia without expounding which details you are referring to is a bit of sleight of hand. Specifically, what part of "separate but equal" [1] "legally required" that "separate" facilities for blacks have poorer conditions than the facilities for whites? I speculate that it's embedded cultural beliefs of hatred and superiority/inferiority (or, at a minimum, apathy) that caused those poorer conditions and discrimination to happen much more so than anything that was "legally required" or based on economic concerns.
Also, the issue at hand for Airbnb is specifically about hosts discriminating against potential guests. How do hosts that discriminate against guests encourage a "race to the bottom"? There might be parallels between discrimination a la Jim Crow and discrimination a la Airbnb hosts, but they aren't in the form of economic concerns. Your snark about learning history seems misplaced.
If you scroll up, you'll see Frondo asserting that "It [discrimination] didn't hurt businesses in the American south enough to compel them to stop discriminating."
Frondo is attempting to argue that market forces don't punish people (much) for discrimination. I'm simply pointing out that market forces weren't even allowed. People discriminated because the law said things like this:
"No colored barber shall serve as a barber [to] white women or girls."
"Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college or institution where members of the white and colored race are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor..."
"No persons, firms, or corporations, who or which furnish meals to passengers at station restaurants or station eating houses, in times limited by common carriers of said passengers, shall furnish said meals to white and colored passengers in the same room, or at the same table, or at the same counter."
" Every person...operating...any public hall, theatre, opera house, motion picture show or any place of public entertainment or public assemblage which is attended by both white and colored persons, shall separate the white race and the colored race..."
Only one (the first) of the four quotes you've chosen restrict market forces in the way you are envisioning, i.e. white workers don't want black competition. I'd be interested in what the next sentence was, and wouldn't be surprised if it was "no white barber shall serve as a barber to colored women". (Aside: it seems like lots of these snippets are floating around the internet with little by way of attribution.)
The remaining three are "separate but equal". We return to the question: what about these laws required that the "separate" facilities be of lesser quality? Nothing about "separate but equal" immediately screams "discrimination", but as we know from history, it can end in discriminatory practice. The de facto ramifications of the laws were that black populations suffered (economically/educationally/etc.) at the hands of white populations: the market forces were not strong enough to encourage a lifting of the laws, or genuinely equal facilities, as Frondo suggests. Similarly, market forces may not be strong enough to encourage Airbnb hosts to serve all potential customers equally.
Your causation is backwards: people created the laws (under guise of equality) because they wanted to discriminate (and, if you want to boil everything down to some ahistorical economic gesture, it resulted in market forces tilting in their favor). To say that the laws stemmed from the economic implications is a stretch, especially post Plessy.
The first of the four quotes describes a market restriction on employment. The other three describe market restrictions demanding discrimination for customers.
Similarly, market forces may not be strong enough to encourage Airbnb hosts to serve all potential customers equally.
That may be true, but citing legally required discrimination as evidence in favor of that proposition is silly. No one claims market forces can fix bad politics.
If we can't agree that the last three refer to "separation" (de facto discrimination) and not de jure discrimination, I think we will only continue to argue past one another.
It was probably because their white customers were racist assholes too so they would lose more money on losing those white customers than they would gain from new black ones.
I would guess some combination of feeling various minorities were filthy and not wanting to deal with them, and a network effect. Sure, you might make money letting rooms to a handful of blacks but you would likely then lose out on all the other racist white folk who don't want to use the same sheets as "one of those people". One can easily imagine it might have been economically harmful to NOT be a racist in those days.
It might, but how would they know? They're so sure they're protecting themselves that they will never care that they're making less money than they could. You'll not convince them of that, because they'll just argue about the potential money lost to undesirable tenants.
Probably not sharply enough or clearly enough to impact behavior.
The thought patterns around this sort of thing can be pretty insidious, too. Some might be thinking stuff along the lines of "I'd be doing better if all these black people weren't tying up my reservations calendar".
No, I specified culture, not race. The way of life is the problem, not someone's skin color or biological features. For example, you wouldn't want gypsies in your residence or hotel, they WILL cause problems and it will negatively effect your other hotel guests. For similar reasons you wouldn't want to live next to them either. Another culture is that of the rich (especially newly rich), where their wealth has allowed them to hire all sorts of servants and baby sitters and in general they treat their hired help as if they are below them.
They bring that same attitude and cause problems (as do spoiled Americans and Europeans, but those tend to be much richer and fewer due to labor costing more) wherever they go due to their entitledness. Again, it has nothing to do with race, but the manner in which one conducts themselves, which may have to do with the environment they grew up in.
Regardless, you would not want to stay in a hotel that did not screen its guests one way or another, and the same principles apply here. Note, that I'm not advocating blindly discriminating against anyone, but simply stating that any business should be forced to accept anyone is not realistic. They will screen one way or another, either by raising the prices, requiring deposits, or simply by not offering the service anymore.
Except that the quote "Certain cultures are known for having lots of kids and not raising them to be quiet or disciplined" is literally a racists trope, used historically by racists to disparage other racial/ethnic groups. And they always defend their this baseless assertion by saying its a critique of culture and not about race. But, that's plainly bullshit. Its especially bullshit because you aren't referring to any specific culture, that's called a dog whistle[1], and its literally something racists do.
> you wouldn't want gypsies in you ... hotel
If they have credit cards I do. And they call themselves Romani, gypsy is a deeply racist term. Why are you still diggin this hole for yourself? You're just throwing around baseless accusations and generalizations about vast swathes of people.
No, credit cards don't do anything. It's merely one part of a screening process. If you try to charge a credit card for room damage or anything, you will get a chargeback that you will lose because Visa or the issuing bank will simply state that according to the merchant agreement, the card networks are NOT responsible for damage and other charges not specified on the rental agreement.
Hell, if you don't have a chip and signature transaction (good luck getting a signature) and you're trying to charge them for amounts not specified prior to check in (a blanket statement of you're liable for so and so doesn't count). You CAN take them to court, but it's not worth it paying lawyers and the time and they usually don't have money.
By gypsies, I mean the groups of people that roam around trying to steal and take advantage of every facility they can, which is how I've heard the term. They don't work, they live off welfare, it's a specific type of person.
Why don't the vast majority of decent hotels (and some local governments) allow hourly rooms? Is it to prevent prostitutes? No, because if you can afford to pay for a night, you're welcome to stay with whoever you want. But if you start selling hourly rooms, chances are you're going to end up with an unsavory crowd which will drive away your other clientele and you're almost guaranteed to have a bad time. Again, this is also another screening method.
Everyone screens and discriminates people all the time, and I'm not dog whistling anyone except those that cause unreasonable damage. When dealing with lodging, if your aim is to sell a dwelling night after night, then anything that impedes that can be considered damage. If your hotel offers a room with a kitchen, and you're selling to Indians or other groups that traditionally use a lot of spices in their cooking, you should put that room out of order for days after they leave because it will need to be carpet shampooed, it might need to be painted, and you will likely lose revenue when you rent this room to that type of person. Is it wrong for a business owner to take this into account when deciding whether or not to accept them?
As I said before, this is not selling a widget to them and then forgetting about them. In hotels and lodging, the transaction is not complete once the guest has left, it really depends on the state of the room once they have left, and in order to be a viable business, in my experience you have be at least be aware of the odds and plan accordingly.
"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'"
With increasing risks that come with the platform growth, this is a move against host safety. We need more discrimination (I mean potential guests should be made to supply more information to give hosts better ways to discriminate), not less.
Robbery, rapes and kills are waiting in the corner.
I have had a reservation cancelled in the last moment (in the Bay Area) without a valid reason. Also about half of the hosts do not even reply to the initial queries.
It is not hard to speculate that me being a 20-something brown guy has something to do with it.
It's time to stop and think about where the cyber-Libertarian line of argument is taking us.
On the one side, AirBnB's rampant violation of lodging and zoning regulations should be disregarded because it's the will of the people, and because hotels are just abusing their government-granted monopoly on mini soaps and pay-per-view porn.
Now people are arguing that, because AirBnB is only serving as a matchmaking service for millions of individual homeowners, not only is it hard to prevent discrimination, but they shouldn't even try.
Assuming the free market works as it usually does, we are heading for a future where we replace millions of hotel beds that are guaranteed to serve everyone equally with millions of AirBnB beds hosted by proprietors free to discriminate against anybody and everybody. How is that progress?
I've read through many of the comments here. People are discussing laws, morality, and how race bias affects our behaviors. All interesting topics. The thing that is most obvious to me is that disrupting technologies and services like $x.sharing challenge existing laws, which are based on past experiences and don't plan for future growth.
It's also obvious we're ill-equipped to deal with it in a timeframe that is reasonable. It's a race condition that the law will always lose, because by the time it catches up the new disrupter will be in full effect.
I think that AirBnB is doing a good thing by trying to address a real problem, even if it's not 100% effective. And if they determine it is not, I hope they continue to try and make it better.
On the flip side, do you really want to stay with a host who would otherwise be discriminatory towards you. I certainly wouldn't. It might be more interesting if you provided your discriminating characteristics and then you could publicly see a host's bias.
I'm black and I agree with you. I don't want bigots strong armed into accepting my money. Though I do understand how someone would feel slighted by race based discrimination and want to take action against it.
Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything - except perhaps suggesting that if you're going to let random strangers stay in your house for money, then perhaps you should be required to abide by the same rules that other commercial providers of similar services have been deemed by society to be required to obey. A hotel who refused a room to someone named Mohammed or who had black or brown skin or who had the same name as a registered sex offender would be rightly penalised for doing so.
The argument that "it's my home and it's a special and private place" kinda went out the window once you decided to list that room on Airbnb. Nobody forced anyone to do that. (Ignoring for a moment arguments about the Bay Area tech industry and it's affects on rental prices...)
I've recently used airbnb services for the first time, I stayed in Pasadena, the apartment was nice and everything but the ceiling fan was installed below safety height of 7', when I was taking off my shirt before going to sleep the spinning fan blade hit my arm pretty badly and broke down falling a feet away from my toddler son, host charged me 160$ (for a fan blade) for the damage and I had to pay it even thought I think host should be responsible for the injuries that your unsafe conditions cause. Airbnb was on host's side stating that I am responsible for damage, but think about it, what if host's apartment has some electric or other problems - will I be also responsible for damages that unsafe installation caused to their apartment? I will not use airbnb services anymore because of that one awful experience I had. The overnight stay that was suppose to save me money - turned into a much more expensive and quite painful experience than what a hotel could have offered me.
i remember reading an article about someone who used an unsafe tire swing at an airbnb and died, but who needs regulations? this is about sharing and disrupting!
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.