Airbnb’s pledge to house Ukrainian refugees gets
a reality check
The rental platform has an army of hosts stepping up
to pitch in and loads of cash to make it happen — but getting the job done is
harder.
BY PIETER
HAECK
March 15,
2022 5:00 pm
https://www.politico.eu/article/airbnb-pledge-target-house-ukranian-refugees-reality-check/
Lieselot
has been renting out her Belgian seaside apartment for almost a year now
through Airbnb. Her next guests: Ukrainian refugees fleeing a Russian invasion.
“I would
cancel a booking for it,” she told POLITICO on the phone.
Lieselot is
one of more than 36,000 hosts who have signed up through Airbnb to offer to
house Ukrainian refugees fleeing war. The U.S.-based short-term rental platform
on February 28 launched one of the largest-ever private initiatives for
refugees, pledging to house up to 100,000 Ukrainians.
Airbnb’s
undertaking would rival the efforts of some EU member countries if it meets its
goal. But while local aid groups said they welcomed Airbnb's initiative, they
also stressed it would take a long time for the company to meet its goals, and
that careful vetting of potential hosts was crucial for the safety of refugees.
HIAS, a
Jewish refugee organization with which Airbnb partners in Poland, said it would
take time to ramp up matchmaking between refugees and hosts. Reaching Airbnb's
upper target of housing 100,000 people — a fraction of the more than 2.5
million Ukrainians who have fled the war — will take months.
Even if the
full number obtains housing, Airbnb is a short-term solution. One of Airbnb's
former partners, the International Rescue Committee, said that it used the
Airbnb partnership during the Afghan war "to help house newly arrived
families while permanent [housing] is being finalized."
Celebrity
backing
Airbnb was
quick to offer its services, with CEO Brian Chesky announcing his pledge just
four days after Russia launched its invasion.
In the two
weeks that followed, data shared with POLITICO shows that more than 21,500 new
hosts registered with the platform to offer free housing through Airbnb.org, a
nonprofit arm of the company that was established in 2020.
Airbnb.org,
which got a test run after NATO's withdrawal from Afghanistan, allows hosts to
offer their services to refugees by specifying what type of guests and how many
people they can accommodate and how long they will be able to offer housing
for. While some hosts already offer housing on Airbnb for a profit, others are
only seeking to take in refugees or disaster victims.
Jan
Deruyck, a host who lives in Portugal, belongs to the second group. He signed
up on Airbnb.org on March 7, after hearing Chesky’s pledge to help Ukrainian
refugees. "We have a space in our home, completely separate, you can live
there undisturbed. If there are people who make it to Portugal, I see no reason
not to do so,” Jan told POLITICO.
Under
Airbnb.org's commitment, refugees who get assigned housing through the platform
are promised 14 days of free housing. But while it’s free for them, some hosts
will still make some money. Airbnb.org invites them to post their housing at a
discount to the commercial price and Airbnb subsidizes the stay, bringing the
cost down to zero for the refugees.
While it's
unclear how many stays will be subsidized, the company has lined up its Refugee
Fund, launched in 2021, to support its effort. Airbnb’s co-founder Joe Gebbia
pitched in $5 million through a donation to kick off the fund, with the aim to
reach $25 million.
For people
who are not able to offer accommodation, Airbnb.org allows them to donate money
to refugees. On March 4 and 5, Airbnb's nonprofit arm received $1.2 million in
direct individual donations, according to data shared with POLITICO.
Celebrity
fundraising is also helping to increase the amount available for refugees.
Actor Mila Kunis — who was born in Ukraine — and her husband Ashton Kutcher
have already raised more than $21 million out of a total goal of $30 million
after a week and a half. Kunis and Kutcher contributed $3 million while tech
venture capitalist Ron Conway donated $2.5 million.
Finding a
home
Behind the
scenes of Airbnb's refugee initiative, there is a vast logistics challenge
involving outreach to governments around the conflict areas and local NGOs that
can match the needs of refugees with the offerings on Airbnb’s platform.
After
announcing its goal, Airbnb reached out to the governments in Germany, Poland,
Romania and Hungary in order to better understand their needs. It also struck a
deal with the U.N.'s migration agency to match refugees to short-term housing
in Poland, Moldova, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. The company has also formed
a partnership with the Jewish aid association HIAS, which has teams on the ground
in Poland working to assist refugees.
But for
organizations like HIAS to operate, coordination on the ground is much needed,
Jessica Reese, vice president of institutional development at HIAS, told
POLITICO. “Humanitarian coordination is being set up, but it's still not quite
clear yet. When any Ukrainian refugee comes to the border, they should be able
to say: This NGO is providing this service, this NGO is providing food, etc.”
HIAS,
however, has moved ahead and has already been vetting a local NGO in Poland
that will be part of the emergency response and will match refugees with
offerings onto the Airbnb.org platform. “Say, for example, a family of six
presents itself to HIAS or to our partner. We’re able to go onto Airbnb’s
platform and match up this family, their size and whatever their specific
vulnerabilities are, with whatever accommodation is on the platform.”
The local
NGO, which Reese declined to name because vetting is still ongoing, has already
been offering shelter, but its technical and personal capacity will be
drastically increased to be able to take on the Airbnb project. "Right now
they're matching Ukrainians — they have a local offer of accommodation. What
we're about to do with the Airbnb platform, is scale it up times a thousand,"
Reese said.
Once the
local partnership is up and running — which Reese said should take a week —
HIAS should be able to match 10 to 30 families a day to short-term
accommodation. Other nonprofit organizations, active in Poland or other
countries, will likely be added later to beef up the response. In Germany,
Airbnb last week struck a deal with the interior ministry and
Unterkunft-Ukraine, a platform that had brought together more than 140,000
hosts.
Vetting the
hosts
The Afghan
crisis in 2021, however, showed that there’s a difference between setting a
target and meeting it. On August 24, 2021, Chesky tweeted that the company
would offer free housing to 20,000 Afghan refugees globally. That target was
finally met on February 22 of the following year.
Why set
such an ambitious goal if it’s only met when everyone else has largely moved on
to the next crisis? Reese is still convinced it’s the right thing to do:
"It's good that they set this high target for influencing other corporate
partners."
But while
Airbnb's commitment was welcomed by other nonprofit organizations with
experience in housing, they also stressed the importance of carefully vetting
hosts participating in the scheme.
A speedy or
nonexistent vetting for refugee hosts could potentially endanger the guests,
some have said, without specifically criticizing Airbnb. “You can imagine
horrible stuff that happens to refugees who are picked up at the border by
people,” Robert Zaal, manager of Takecarebnb, a Dutch organization that matches
refugees with host families for three months.
It’s one of
the reasons why Takecarebnb conducts lengthy intake interviews with both hosts
and refugees before matching. "We try to offer an alternative, an
organized process, both for host and refugee," Zaal told POLITICO. In
Ghent, Belgium, authorities also have said they would vet people offering
shelter before matching them up with refugees.
Airbnb’s
registration process for hosts is much shorter. Host Jan said it took him about
“10 to 15 minutes” to register on Airbnb.org. Reese agreed that hosts taking
advantage of or mistreating refugees was a "definite risk," but added
that her colleagues were prepared to increase security for refugees during the
booking process. "Staff are trained to put everything through a risk-mitigation
lens, in terms of how they book."
Another
concern is how Airbnb's offering — with stays up to 14 days — can help refugees
in the long haul. "[Booking] an Airbnb is most of the time for a weekend
or a week. But in this case, we don't know how long these people will need
shelter. It can be months," Zaal said.
When asked
by POLITICO how Airbnb.org works, how it's funded, how it worked with NGOs and
how the vetting process worked, Airbnb did not comment but offered a short
statement instead.
“Airbnb.org
is offering free, short-term housing to up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine.
We know that Hosts and guests on Airbnb around the world are eager to stand up
and assist during this moment of crisis, and Airbnb.org continues to work
closely with governments and civil society partners to best support the
specific needs in each country.”
It's a
pitch that hosts like Lieselot and Jan are ready to live up to. "This is
only an interim solution," Jan said.
This
article has been updated.
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