To belong anywhere, you have to respect everywhere.
What I’d like to see from Airbnb is more civic responsibility.
“Belong anywhere” is a powerful mission. A world where our primary community is the global community is one with more empathy, more access, more peace, and more understanding. The future is beautiful.
Sadly, you wouldn’t know it by witnessing Airbnb. The supposed stewards of “Belong Anywhere” launched some adversarial ads yesterday that made me and many others feel like this:
Airbnb’s various snarky suggestions for what the city could do with money raised from their customers ranged from indulgent to dramatically undercosted and demonstrated an unfortunate dismissive mindset towards government that is pervasive in the tech community. Even our more thoughtful leaders declare government as “incompetent” without acknowledging the complexity of the problems the government is tasked with solving.
The implication is that if we just replaced stupid government employees with smart startup folks everything would be magically better.
In some cases — especially those with clear software solutions — that’s probably a fair assessment. We should not tolerate ineffectiveness from our government. But for the most part, governance is a much harder problem than what is attempted by most startups. Governments are charged with serving all their constituents whoever they may be and no matter how contradictory their desires; companies get to define their own market and fire any users who don’t want what they build. Being able to focus on a single objective function (profit) is what makes finding success as a corporation so tractable. But we are coming to realize that we need to ask more of our companies if we want to optimize for global success.
What I see from Airbnb
In the context of the great debate on Proposition F, yesterday’s ads constitute a clear pattern in Airbnb’s attitude towards the city: Airbnb expects San Franciscans to view the government as an antagonist rather than a representative of their interests, and any cooperation on its part is begrudging at best.
I refuse to accept this perspective. I see government as an important tool in balancing the diverse interests of our city, and I expect proactive, intentional citizenship from all of our corporations.
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock — say, because you can’t find a place to live — rising housing prices are a major cause of stress to almost every person who lives in San Francisco. Airbnb is far from the biggest factor in a metropolitan area with weak regional government, exclusionary zoning, outdated property tax law, and a whole list of other gigantic problems. Still, the city estimates up to 2000 units have been taken off the market to become short-term rentals, while Airbnb estimates 348 units have been rented often enough that the owner made more than they would from market-rate rent. 300 may not sound like much, but given that the city has paid up to $900k per unit, it takes hundreds of millions of dollars in upfront capital to offset even the most conservative estimates of Airbnb’s current impact on housing availability, and the available parcels on which to do so are finite.
We all wish it weren’t so difficult to build even just a few units. We need to invite more, better solutions for adding housing capacity so that we can endure these kinds of market shifts without turmoil. But right now, every unit counts. I’d love to hear Airbnb say they’re committed to being a positive contributor to our city’s biggest crisis, or at least doing whatever they can to avoid making it worse. I invite Airbnb to offer creative, win-for-all solutions that increased the efficiency with which we use space and preserved our community. For example, fighting for the rights of tenants — not just homeowners — to host on Airbnb (at below-lease rates) would both making renting more affordable and prevent evictions that deplete the crucial rent-controlled housing stock. (Though of course it’s hard to imagine Airbnb ever jeopardizing its coalition with homeowners to support tenants.) Perhaps there are more forward-thinking ideas for how Airbnb could help create more long-term affordable housing? It’d be awesome to see Airbnb host a forum on this topic.
Instead, so far, Airbnb has decided to appeal to fear, centering the civic discussion around the potential for frivolous lawsuits. The provision in question, which has been broken down elsewhere, stems from a simple idea: we ought consider our neighbors in our actions, and that they should have recourse if we ignore them.
It seems to me the court ought be a measure of last resort, but we need some way of shaping our neighborhoods to be neighborly. In one recent forum I heard one voter state that they wanted to live abroad while renting a recently purchased apartment on Airbnb, believing “I should have the right to monetize my asset.” The very notion that a home is a private asset rather than a place to live demonstrates what is at stake. In a world where the places we live are first and foremost financial vehicles, what is left to belong to?
What I want to see
The lawsuit provision that Airbnb decries would be unnecessary if the law were more universally enforced. How might that happen?
(1) Airbnb and other platform providers could block hosts from hosting beyond the current 90-night limit (or 75-night limit if Prop F passes), preventing users from blatantly violating the law.
(2) Airbnb could require a valid registration for hosting in San Francisco, again preventing users from blatantly violating the law.
(3) Airbnb could provide the city with regular data of the transactions on its platform such that the city could effortlessly detect violators of the law.
These are non-trivial tasks. It’s essential that all platforms do this, lest another hosting platform take Airbnb’s business by being less scrupulous. The exact data formats, transfer methods, and retention policies need to be well thought-out and disclosed to users. The government needs to take responsibility for making applying for registration as easy as possible. This needs to be a true collaboration from all actors.
But imagine if Airbnb took the $8 million it spent on lobbying for No on F and put that money instead towards research and development of regulation through transparency. What if it drafted laws that traded off less stringent restrictions in exchange for partnership from the hosting platforms in actually enforcing those restrictions? I’d sure rather vote for those than Proposition F.
I’m not a fan of Proposition F. I don’t see a strong case for preferring 75-night rentals over 90-night rentals. I’d prefer automatic enforcement through software, not the courts. Most of all, I’d prefer that this not be legislated via the ballot, and that our government officials be empowered to iterate on the law as this emerging industry matures. But it makes me sad that I am forced to choose between bad legislation and supporting a bad actor.
The broader impact
What makes me saddest of all is that all this conflict is happening in Airbnb’s hometown. Of all places, Airbnb should be able to understand and represent the needs of the community here. I love using Airbnb. But, regardless of intent, the product has parasitic side effects: the more successful it is, the more it stands to consume the communities to which it provides access. Global digital nomads can and will slowly usurp local culture and erode the communities to which they wish to belong. This can only be prevented if Airbnb actively balances its “Belong anywhere” mission with “Respect everywhere” mindfulness. But what hope does Airbnb have of considering its impact abroad if it ignores its impact at home?
Many thanks to Kim-Mai Cutler for the dedicated reporting that enabled this piece. Opinions are unaffiliated.
